


Defender

by Bastet5



Series: The Wild Hunt [11]
Category: FBI: Most Wanted (TV 2020)
Genre: Claustrophobia, FBI: MW 1x02, Flashbacks, Foster Care, Gen, Kidnapping, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Team Dynamics, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:47:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23931034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bastet5/pseuds/Bastet5
Summary: August 2019After her only son is sentenced to 20 years in prison for a petty crime, a mother begins a deadly rampage.The team races to track her down before she kills or hurts more people in a quest to piece together her shattered family.In the midst of it all, memories from Kateri's past rear their ugly heads, proving that PTSS is a struggle that never fully goes away.
Relationships: Clinton Skye & Original Female Character(s), Kenny Crosby & Original Female Character(s)
Series: The Wild Hunt [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678864
Comments: 53
Kudos: 14





	1. Wednesday, August 21: Day 1

**Author's Note:**

> FBI Most Wanted has been renewed for Season 2!!!! So happy!

For one of the rare times, or so it seemed, in the course of Kateri’s career with the Fugitive Response Team, the team had passed the whole weekend without a new case coming up. _Even Kenny commenting on how quiet things were managed not to jinx us_. They wrapped up the paperwork for the last case on Monday and were now entering a brief period of rest before the next case appeared. The team was still on call, but unless there was a call, they did not have to go into work.

_Yayyyyyy, us!_

On Tuesday, Kateri had taken the opportunity to deep clean her apartment from top to bottom. On Wednesday, she had allowed herself the luxury of sleeping in until 8:30am before rising to go running. She had just finished showering and eating breakfast after her run when her phone buzzed with an incoming text.

 _What is it about phone-calls and texts coming when your hands are dirty, wet, or slimy_ , she groused internally to herself. Kateri was standing at the sink, wrist deep in water and soap-suds washing yesterday’s dishes which she had left soaking overnight and her breakfast’s dishes. She dried her hands quickly and thumbed open her phone.

It was about 10:15am when the text arrived, a group-text from Jess, informing them of a kidnapping case and shooting outside Reading, Pennsylvania. A kidnapping case had tight timelines to get everyone back in one piece and meant that everyone needed to assemble and get going in a hurry.

_I didn’t know there was a Reading in Pennsylvania. I thought Reading was near Boston._

_Glad I hadn’t gone grocery shopping yet._ That had been next on her agenda. Her fridge was starting to get rather bare.

 _Guess I’ll finish these dishes when I get back_. She sent an acknowledgement, opened the sink drain, and then hurried off to get ready.

Within ten minutes, Kateri was ready to go, perks of already being showered and dressed and having an always ready go-bag. She made one last pass through her apartment.

_Lights are off._

_Climate control is set. No reason to cool this place when I’m not here_.

_Coffee pot’s off. Stove’s off. Don’t want to burn down the place._

_Grab a soda. Fridge and freezer are shut tight._

_Time to go._

Everything was going fine, until she got down to the parking lot and went to start her truck. Kateri buckled up, turned the key to start the truck. Nothing happened. She tried again. Still nothing. She tried a third time. Still nothing.

 _Oh, bloody h**l. Come on you bucket of bolts. Now is not the time_.

 _I’d make Clinton’s day if I finally replaced you_. Her partner had firm opinions about her old truck that she had for like a decade, and none of them were good. _I’m soon going to be losing the argument that it’s not broken as much as he says it is_.

Cursing under her breath in French, Kateri popped the hood and leapt out of her truck. She was not a good mechanic but knew the basics and knew what everything under the hood was supposed to look like. There was nothing visibly bonkers.

_Gas is full. Battery should be fine._

_I just got this stupid truck inspected. Why now of all times?_

Kateri glanced at her watch. It was just over 15 minutes since Jess had sent the text. The team had still been on-call, despite being home and on a de facto break, and most everyone was probably getting moving toward HQ.

_Who to call?_

_Kenny lives the closest._

_Please be home_.

Kateri pulled her phone from her pocket and pressed speed-dial #2 for Kenny.

Two rings later, Kenny picked up. “Hello.” He was slightly out of breath, and from the feet on pavement sounds, he was probably hurrying to leave for HQ … hopefully.

“Hey, please tell me you’re not at work yet?”

“No, just leaving my place,” Kenny replied. A car beeped in the background, “What do you need?”

“A ride,” Kateri resisted the urge to kick one of her truck’s tires out of sheer spite and annoyance, “My bucket of bolts won’t start.”

“Again?” there was a note of incredulity in his voice, “Maybe you should just take Clinton’s advice.”

“Oh, don’t you start, too.”

Kenny laughed, “I’m on my way. I’ll be to your place shortly.”

Kateri thanked him and hung up her phone. She grabbed her duffle from her truck and settled down on the steps of her apartment building to wait. How long it would take Kenny to get from his place to hers varied on a day-to-day basis depending on the traffic, and there was no way she was going to risk making him wait on her with a kidnapping case on the books by going back to her apartment for a few minutes. The weather had cooled down significantly over the last several days, and instead of it being unpleasant to sit outside, it was actually almost a touch chilly.

 _Phone says it’s only 65, and there’s a nice brisk wind_.

Glancing back at the parking lot periodically, Kateri unzipped her duffle long enough to grab her leather jacket out and slip that on over a long-sleeved t-shirt. Fifteen minutes after her call to Kenny, the man himself entered the parking lot and pulled to a stop in front of the steps to her building.

“You are a lifesaver,” Kateri declared, as she climbed into the passenger seat, pulling the door shut behind her.

“Happy to be of use,” Kenny laughed, “But you really should think about getting a new truck.”

“I like that truck,” Kateri protested, twisting around to shove her duffle out of her lap and into the back-seat. _No way it’s going to smush me all the way to HQ_ , “and a new one costs money. I don’t know why that bucket of bolts isn’t working this time anyway. I just got it inspected, for heaven’s sake, and the gas is full. Battery’s good.”

“I’ll have a look at it when we get back, if you want,” Kenny offered, before unloosing several choice curses at the necessity of stomping on the breaks to not hit a moron who had just pulled out in front of them. _Jeep meets baby car. Who do you really think is going to win, moron???_ He was a better mechanic than she was. Being in the army had taught him a few things.

“If you’re offering, have at it. Paying you in food and cold soda or beer is much cheaper than the mechanic’s fee.”

“And much more satisfying!” Kenny gave her a wink and a boyish grin. His appetite was legendary and a perennial source of good-natured jokes among the team. He also liked Kateri’s cooking.

Kateri smiled and laughed, “Did you have a good break?”

Kenny nodded, “Yea. You?”

“I cleaned my apartment, and I got the text before I headed out to get groceries, so I’ll count it productive if not the most fun couple days I’ve ever spent.”

Jess and Barnes’ cars were already in the parking garage as Kenny parked in a free spot about fifteen feet from the door into the team’s muster room. Hana had turned into the parking garage two cars behind them and was just pulling to a stop a few rows down.

“Thanks again,” Kateri said, as she pulled her duffle from the backseat. She didn’t see Clinton’s car yet, so she’d have to drag her bag inside and then back outside once he arrived.

“Happy to,” Kenny replied, pocketing his keys. He opened his mouth to say something else, but before he could, Hana pulled a Hana.

“Morning, you two. Something you’d like to tell the rest of us?”

For a moment, Kateri didn’t get it, and her brow furrowed in puzzlement. _What do you mean?_ She glanced down, saw the teasing look on Hana’s face and the pointed look she was giving them … and the only one car. _Oh, come on, really?_ Hana had a _quirky? eccentric?_ sense of humor, and though she meant well, some of her humor occasionally had no filter.

Though Kateri was still spluttering internally, Kenny, however, did not miss a beat, “Yea, her truck’s broke again, go figure!”

That brought on a good chuckle. Hana went on ahead, while Kenny hung back with Kateri, who had crouched down to fix one of her boot laces. _Not that it actually needed fixing_. She’d just wanted a second to tamp down the instinctive rush of embarrassment at Hana’s question. _One advantage of not being white. I can’t literally go red. Well, I might be able to, but it doesn’t show._

“She didn’t mean any harm,” Kenny said quietly, leaning on the corner of his jeep and looking down at her.

“I know,” Kateri said with a rueful half-smile, pushing herself back to her feet and slinging her duffle over her shoulder, “It’s just …” She made a face that said all that her words didn’t.

Kenny shrugged and nodded sympathetically, “I love you like a sister, but you’re not my type anyway.”

Cueing a sad face, Kateri replied, falling into step beside him as they headed toward the door, “I’m not.” Her fake sad face broke into a smile, and she laughed, “And I’d take a bullet for you in a heartbeat, but you’re not my type either.”

The two split off as they entered. Kenny headed off toward the fridge, while Kateri went to her locker. The low buzz of conversation washed over her, and she felt herself settling back into work routines after a couple days by herself. A few minutes later, the door opened again.

“Is Kateri here yet?” It was her partner’s voice.

“Back here,” Kateri called back. Her locker was at the end of the row nearest the exercise equipment and farthest from the door. She was mostly hidden from view by the shelves that stood between the lockers and the couch along the other wall.

Clinton appeared around the shelves and set his bag down by his locker, “There you are. Where’s your truck?”

“Three guesses, and two don’t count,” Kateri grumbled, rummaging around in her locker. _I know I’ve got an extra mag in here somewhere_. Her locker was like her drawers at home. She cleaned and neatened them periodically, but gradually entropy took over, and her locker/drawers descended into chaos until she got so sick of not being able to find anything that she cleaned them again, and then the cycle repeated itself.

“That thing of yours is a menace.” Her partner put the pieces together immediately, not surprising given his opinion of her truck. He had had to pick her up more than once when her truck wasn’t working, but _then there was the time I had to pick HIM up when his car wasn’t working. That was fun!_

At the moment, Kateri was inclined to agree. Whether she still did after the case was finished was yet to be seen.

 _Hurray! My mag_. Digging through a pile of old scrap paper, receipts, and report drafts— _how on earth did it end up there?_ —Kateri finally spied her missing mag, grabbed it before it could disappear, and slipped it into an outer pocket of her duffle bag. _Sometimes I think my stuff can sprout legs_.

Kateri finished packing first and swung by Hana’s desk to grab the case files, handing off one copy to her partner once he had finished packing. A quick look through the files made her think that it was going to be one sad but messed up case. Family members, in her experience, driven to extreme lengths because of perceived injustice … cases like that rarely seemed to end well. As a woman of color but also as a law enforcement officer, Kateri had sympathies on both sides. The kid had gotten a rough deal, but even a mother’s love did not excuse what Ms. Tyson had done.

“We have Denise Tyson,” Hana announced a few minutes later, walking over from her desk to the conference table and sitting down, “37. Walked into a public defender’s office and started blasting away.”

Jess made for his usual seat at the conference table, heading from the direction of the lockers, and Kateri sidestepped out of his way. She had a bad habit of getting distracted by something—in this case the Most Wanted poster on the screens—and stopping in her tracks, sometimes in the middle of a walk-way. She had to sidestep again a few moments later to get out of her partner’s way, after he returned from the bathroom.

Hana was still giving the run-down, “Killed the client, wounded the lawyer, took a hostage, and drove off in their car.”

Even after scanning the case file, Kateri’s reaction was still _Wait, whattttttt._ She was not a fan of lawyers, except for her partner and maybe one or two other rare exceptions, but … _overkill, much?_

“The field office in Philadelphia is assisting with the kidnapping,” Hana finished.

_Philadelphia, that’s about an hour-and-a-half or two hours depending on traffic. I know where Reading, Massachusetts, is, but how far is this Reading from Phily?_

“No GPS tracking?” Asked Barnes.

“No GPS in the car,” Kenny answered, appearing from the back of the room. After his first raid on the fridge, he had been lifting weights or something while waiting for things to get rolling. “And both phones, Tyson’s and the paralegal’s, are both powered down.”

“What’s the connection between Tyson and the lawyer?” Asked Barnes.

“He represented her son Kendall on a robbery beef,” Hana replied, throwing up the kid’s arrest record onto the screen.

_He’s so young._

_That could’ve been me without some of the better influences in my life_.

Despite her friendship with Billy Suarez and some of his acquaintances during her younger years, their paths had diverged sharply as they all grew up. Billy and the others had gotten more and more out of step with the law, progressively getting into worse and worse trouble, and Kateri had focused on making something of herself in life and had put herself on a path that ended with her in law enforcement.

“It can’t have gone well if she shot the lawyer,” noted Jess, “Tell me more about her.”

 _Uh, no_.

Kateri moved a step back out of the aisle and leaned up against the metal shelves in the middle of the room, listening to the others talk and occasionally absent-mindedly drumming her fingers on her chin. She’d put a word in edgewise if there was a need, but for now she could just be silent and listen like she liked.

“Single mom, one kid,” Hana replied, scrolling through some files on her tablet, “Works as a stylist at a hair salon, so mad skills with disguises.”

_With hair, maybe. Not necessarily with the rest. Changing your hair, your clothes is the easy part._

_Changing how you move, how you act, how you talk and doing it consistently is a whole lot harder_.

Crunching noises from the direction of the fridge made Kateri look over. _Kenny’s back in the fridge again. Did you not eat breakfast or something?_

“So,” said the boss, “she shoots up an office, an act of explosive rage. She have a history?”

“No prior conviction,” Clinton replied, flipping through the files Kateri had handed him a few minutes earlier, “she was arrested for attempted murder in Baltimore fifteen years ago.”

 _Didn’t see that. Didn’t expect that either_.

“Attempted murder?” Added Kenny, “Well, if at first you don’t succeed…”

Kateri gave a half-muffled snort of laughter, sharing an amused look with her partner. The situation wasn’t funny, but Kenny’s one-liners sure were.

“The grand jury didn’t indict her. The case was dismissed unsealed,” Clinton finished, closing the files and slipping them into his bag.

Jess’ face was a mixture of puzzlement, deep thought, and some other emotion Kateri could not identify. “Still, it’s a tangled web,” he noted, “Hana, start with the coworkers. Clinton, Kat, and Crosby, embed with the kidnapping task force. Make sure the youngster doesn’t eat them out of their larder.”

Clinton shot an amused glance in Kenny’s direction. “I’ll do my best.”

Kateri’s shoulders were shaking with silent laughter, and she added, “We might need a bigger budget to do that, boss.”

Kenny, who was back in the fridge again for like the third time since they arrived, looked back over his shoulder and gave them his most aggrieved, faux-hurt look.

“And tell them to keep their fingers away from his mouth,” put in Hana, a smirk curling up the corners of her mouth.

Kenny slammed the fridge door shut with a rattle of bottles and cans and sent her a “very funny” look.

“Now,” Jess’ hands thumped on the table. He rose and went around to the other end of the table to look more closely at the arrest record of Ms. Tyson’s son, “There are three reasons people take a hostage: ransom, human shield, and leverage for a set of demands. Let’s find out what exactly Denise Tyson wants.”

* * *

It was a longish drive from New York City to Reading, Pennsylvania, about two hours or so. (Kateri had taken the chance to check a map on her phone while the others had been talking.) In a kidnapping, every hour was vital. It was already 11:45am, which meant that two hours had already passed since the shooting. In general, the more hours that passed, the less chance there was of rescuing the hostage alive. The team needed to get a move on. Bags and papers were gathered, and the team scattered to their cars, Barnes and Jess to one, Hana to a second, and Clint, Kateri, and Kenny to a third.

Kenny and Kateri spent most of the two-hour trip to Reading, Pennsylvania on the phone, while Clinton drove. Their task was to embed with the kidnapping team, but when time was of the essence, they could start getting information now from local PD and from the local field office and not wait until they got to the scene.

Factoring in a short stop for drive-through hamburgers, it was 2pm exactly when the four agents arrived at the hapless public defender’s office to get a look at the crime scene. ERT techs had long since finished, and the crime scene—the whole office—was taped off with two cops left to keep an eye on things. In the consulting room, pools of blood and assorted medical detritus marked where the lawyer, Buchman, and his client had been shot and where the techs had fought to save them.

Something was niggling Kateri about the scene, and she left her teammates to look over the crime scene, while she walked and then re-walked Ms. Tyson’s path out of the building. Buchman’s office was on the second floor and was at the opposite end of a long hallway from the stairs/elevator. At 9:30am on a Wednesday morning, there would have been plenty of other people in the building and security guards.

_It’s not of much significance for the case in the long run, but …_

_How did she manage to make it out of the building?_

With a puzzled frown and fingers tapping away on her chin, Kateri returned to Buchman’s office. Her two teammates had finished perusing whatever they had been looking at in the conference room and had returned to the outer office and were talking quietly as she returned. The conversation paused, and Clinton looked her over, apparently and unsurprisingly having noticed her absence. “Everything alright?” He asked.

Her instinctive nod turned into a shrug, after a moment’s thought. “I was just walking Ms. Tyson’s route out. I’m rather surprised she actually made it out of the building.”

Kenny shot her a puzzled look. “She had a hostage?” He noted in a “uh, duh” voice.

“I know that, but that’s not it. Does the report say what kind of revolver she had?” Kateri resisted the urge to childishly roll her eyes.

“The security guard on duty identified it as a .38 special,” Clinton replied slowly. There was a light slowly dawning in his eyes.

 _Now you’ve got it_.

Kenny waved a finger between the two, “I’m not following the mind-meld thing. What’s the point?”

“A .38 special is a five-shot, right?” Kateri confirmed.

Kenny nodded.

“Mrs. Tyson fired four times before she took the paralegal hostage. From the security camera videos we were looking at in the car, she never stopped to reload, and there probably was not even time for her to do so in a blind spot before she got downstairs and was accosted by the security guard.”

“She only had one shot left,” Clinton noted, nodding.

“She threatened to shoot her hostage, which was why she got out of the building at all, but wasn’t anyone counting shots?” Kateri shook her head, “The guard was armed, so Tyson couldn’t have shot her hostage, even if she didn’t want something from her, because then she would have been exposed without her human shield and out of ammo. If she had used that one shot that she had left, one more person might have been dead, but she would have still been out of ammo and anyone else could have rushed her and taken her down easily. Catch-22. If someone had just been counting shots …”

“This whole situation could have been avoided.” Kenny finished and swore colorfully.

 _This all could have been avoided_.

 _Also, a good reason to really, really avoid revolvers. Too few shots_.

* * *

On that dismal note, Kenny, Kateri, and Clinton wrapped up at the crime scene and then left to meet with the Task Force on the case. The Task Force had very little new information to offer, and soon Clinton got a text from Jess, who had been off talking to Buchman with Barnes at the hospital, for the team to reform at the courthouse.

It was raining lightly when they arrived there, and they all hurried across the parking lot into the shelter of the building. Jess and Barnes were waiting in the atrium.

“Any news?” Jess asked.

“Except that this whole situation could probably have been avoided,” Clinton replied, “No. Task Force didn’t have anything new for us yet.”

Barnes raised an eyebrow. From the pinched look on her face, the meeting with the lawyer probably had not gone well, “I’m assuming you don’t mean if the judge had given Kendall a more reasonable sentence.”

Kateri shook her head and filled the others in on what she had realized back at the crime scene, and then Jess and Barnes filled them in on the less-than-helpful visit with the less-than-helpful lawyer. The lawyer could not do anything to help Ms. Tyson going forward, but his blathering had helped give the agents a fuller picture of Ms. Tyson, her state of mind, and what she might do going forward.

 _Thus, why we’re here at the courthouse_.

Jess’ plan was to throw Ms. Tyson a lifeline by getting the judge to state publicly that he was reconsidering the sentencing. Kenny stayed downstairs to make some calls, while the others went off to find the judge. Jess’ plan sounded good in theory, but it started going off the rails as soon as the team got upstairs to speak with Judge Philpot.

 _That poor man, to get saddled with a last name like that_.

“What do you mean reconsidering the sentencing?” Judge Philpot asked skeptically, entering his chambers and removing his robes, as Kateri and the others filed into his office behind him.

“Only for the purposes of a news interview.” Barnes replied, “Tell the reporter you thought it over, and the sentence was too harsh.”

The room was small, crowded with multiple large bookcases, the judge’s large desk, and another table with several chairs. Deciding discretion was the better part of valor, Kateri planted herself in the doorway, holding up the doorframe, and waited to see if she would be needed. There was no reason to push her tolerance level for small spaces without a good reason

“The interview will be broadcast this evening,” Jess continued the explanation, “The hope is to convince Ms. Tyson to release the hostage and surrender.”

“Oh, convince her by giving her what she wants, and then what?” The judge asked harshly, “Every defendant with a grievance’ll come back here waving a gun.”

_You might be singing a different tune if you had been the one staring down that gun this morning or if it were one of your clerks in danger._

“You can reaffirm your original sentence after Tyson is in custody,” Clinton argued. As the resident lawyer on the team, this was more up his alley.

“This charade won’t do wonders for my integrity,” the judge protested.

_There are lives on the line!! Thing about someone besides yourself, for pity’s sake._

“And sentencing a child to 20 years does, when the white kid got probation?” Barnes asked skeptically, arms folded across her chest.

_Go Barnes!_

The judge had no answer to that and only cleared his throat awkwardly.

“Judge, there’s precedent,” Clinton was not one to admit defeat easily, “People v. Maldonado, a judge from New York held a phony hearing to catch a perpetrator.”

_Did you know that off the top of your head, because when would have had a chance to look that up?_

“Not my courtroom. I’m not going to be made the fool because you people can’t do your jobs,” the judge declared, sitting down at his desk.

 _Oh, for heaven’s sake, really? We’re all on the same side here, judge. You could at least try to be helpful_.

Before anything more could be said, the phone on the judge’s desk began to ring. He leaned over to peer at the number and then leaned back as if he were going to ignore it. Barnes and Jess exchanged pointed looks, as if they were seeing something that Kateri, at the wrong angle, to see a number or caller ID, wasn’t.

“Your honor,” Prompted Jess, “Answer the phone. Have Crosby initiate a trace!”

 _Wait, what?_ Kateri straightened, puzzled. Without being able to see the phone, she was not sure what had just happened.

“That’s the fourth time she’s called today. It’s probably a wrong number,” the judge noted unconcerned.

“Rebecca Zayas is Tyson’s hostage,” Jess filled in.

_Oh! Maybe this’ll work after all!_

Kateri straightened from her slouch in the doorway and drifted closer to her partner’s side, where she could also look over his shoulder when she wanted to. He was talking quickly but quietly with Kenny but, attune to her movements, looked over as she appeared by his side.

“Oh,” replied the judge, “Then you answer it.”

Kateri resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose or roll her eyes repeatedly. _This judge is a piece of work!_

“It’s probably Tyson,” Jess countered, “she knows your voice. Be positive. Keep her talking, and put it on speaker.”

The judge finally agreed and answered the phone, “This is Judge Philpot.”

A woman’s voice responded, “This is Denise Tyson. You put my son, my 16-year old boy in jail for 20-years. I need you to take it back, please.” Her voice was firm but barely calm with the slightest waver of grief and fear. She sounded, to Kateri, like she was almost in tears. She sounded like a woman pushed to her limit, but _yet she said, ‘Please’_.

Everything went downhill again from there. The judge seemed to not have absorbed Jess’ instructions and seemed to have no conception of what was necessary to keep a kidnapper from doing something stupid.

“Ms. Tyson,” the judge replied, “I know you’re upset, but I can’t just change a legally imposed sentence. It’s not in my legal purview to do that. I can’t do that.”

There was an instinctive wince from each of the agents. Nothing about that statement was going to placate Ms. Tyson or calm the situation, which came apparent a couple of seconds later.

“You need to show me some respect!” The woman herself snapped, almost yelling, “I am telling you what to do. You want me to shoot this woman?”

Jess had had enough and stepped forward to intervene. _Good. Maybe he can dig us out of this hole of the judge’s making._ One of Kateri’s hand drifted up unthinkingly to start twisting her watch band.

“Ms. Tyson, this is Special Agent Jess LaCroix of the FBI,” he began, putting the phone to his ear, “I’ve been listening to your conversation, and I’d like to work with you to try to get justice for Kendall.”

The phone was still on speaker, so Kateri and the others could still hear what was said.

“You’re the FBI?” Ms. Tyson asked. Her tone had calmed somewhat.

 _Progress_. Kateri gave a slight sigh of relief. An arm brushing against hers made her look over. Clinton had shifted a step closer, noticing her unease, and gave her a small reassuring smile.

“Yes,” Jess replied, “I’m sympathetic to your concern, Ms. Tyson. Twenty years is no justice, but right now I’m concerned about you and concerned about Rebecca.”

“Don’t worry about me. You get the judge to give his word that he’ll change the sentence.”

The judge was staring at Jess, his chin resting on one hand. His face looked unconvinced, and then he rolled his eyes slightly. _You could at least try to help_.

“I’ll give you my word that I’ll try,” Jess agreed. He was doing a much better at keeping the situation calm and Ms. Tyson talking than the judge was. “But I’d like you to do something for me. I’d like you to think about turning yourself in to me.”

“No, I can’t,” was Ms. Tyson’s instinctive reply, a mother’s worry and concern in her voice, “My son needs me out here, fighting for him.” _It’s amazing what love can push one to do_.

“I understand. You’re a good mother,”— _in some ways, yes, but more misguided. Love has to have a limit on what it’ll do_ —“Maybe you could think about releasing Rebecca. That would help the judge make a good decision for Kendall.”

 _I doubt the judge will do anything helpful one way or the other. It would, at least, get the collateral out of harm’s way_.

Indecision and hesitation entered Ms. Tyson’s voice, “I don’t know.” Her mood had calmed from the anger and threats of a couple of minutes before. _Progress_.

“You need time to think,” Jess replied, “I get it. Would you like to speak with your pastor?” He looked over at Clinton and snapped his fingers, a signal for Clinton to get the pastor on the phone, “I spoke with him. He said you’ve got a good heart.”

“Please,” Ms. Tyson agreed, “I just want my child back.” That Kateri could definitely understand. “I want my family …” Her voice trailed off unexpectedly.

Kateri’s blood ran cold. She had a bad feeling, which was confirmed a moment later, when Ms. Tyson screamed, not at the team, but probably at her hostage, “What the h**l are you doing?” There were sounds of a beating, the impact of flesh on flesh, the cries of an injured hostage.

Tyson was yelling at her hostage, but only some of her words were understandable over the still-open phone line. _Did she drop the phone?_ Jess was still trying to negotiate, telling her not to hurt Rebeca, to think of her son. There was no response.

Then the line went dead. Jess tried to restore the connection but was unsuccessful. Kateri swore internally. She could only hope that Rebecca made it out of this alive.

Clinton’s phone buzzed. “It’s Crosby,” he said a second later, “Rebecca Zayas’s cell pinged a tower eighteen miles from here.”

* * *

Hana and Crosby were already kitted up and in one SUV, waiting to leave, when the others hurried outside. There would be no time to kit up at the scene, and while the others could kit up during the drive—it was hard but doable—that did not work for the driver. Bullet-proof vests were pulled on hurriedly in the parking lot, and straps were checked, and then they piled into the car, Barnes driving, Jess in the passenger seat, and Kateri and Clinton in the back.

The drive passed quickly. The traffic was light, and what traffic there was got out of the way of the hauling SUVs with lights and sirens. Kateri starred out the window at the passing scenery as Barnes drove, letting the dreary sights flash by as her mind wandered. _What are we going to find?_ Kateri hoped not a dead hostage. Finding bodies in trunks were not just a thing of TV.

Trunks were unfortunately not the best thing to think about.

_The overpowering scent of cedar_

_The pain of scratched and bloodied fingertips_

_Wrists rubbed raw by ropes._

_“Please let me out. Please let me out. I won’t tell. I promise!”_

Warm, calloused fingers curling over her right wrist jolted Kateri out of the beginnings of an ill-timed flashback. Jess and Barnes, thankfully, seemed not to have noticed.

“You alright?” Clinton asked, dark eyes concerned. It took her a long moment to realize that he hadn’t spoken in English.

Being on a team meant that very often the six of them were crammed in close quarters together for days on end, whether that be on the bus, in a car, or in a motel room. Having a private conversation usually meant either finding someplace else to talk or having the others develop selective hearing. For Clinton and Kateri, it was simpler. He didn’t speak French like she did, but they both spoke Mohawk, since they were from the same tribe.

It took her moment for her brain to switch gears out of English— _not into French!_ —and into Mohawk. “Old memories,” she shrugged. Her partner knew enough to interpret what she meant without her having to spell it out. _Old and older actually_. She hated when bad memories decided to try and combine in her flashbacks.

“You good for this?”

Kateri nodded.

“Two minutes,” Barnes called from the front.

“I’m good,” Kateri added, meeting her partner’s eyes and forcing a smile, “I’m okay.”

Clinton starred back at her for a long moment but finally nodded, accepting her word. She was quite sure he was going to check on her again later, though. He squeezed her wrist gently and then withdrew his hand, and Kateri forced her brain back into English.

Their target was a mostly empty parking lot of what looked to be a car dealership. Backup and EMS were further behind, so it was the team who arrived alone two minutes later, pulling to a stop about fifteen feet from the car. A light rain was falling, which added an extra slight layer of difficulty to the raid. Now was the not the time for slips on wet pavement.

Two minutes was a short time to get her head back in the groove, but Kateri had mostly managed to do so by the time she slipped out of the car behind her partner. Thankfully her job was straightforward, if not always simple: stay at his side and watch his back.

Kateri’s eyes flickered over the scene, cataloging everyone’s position. Hana and Kenny were off on the left side of the vehicle, coming from their own car. Barnes was covering the back of the target vehicle. Clinton and Kateri herself were covering the right side, as they all moved forward, and Jess had moved around until he was a couple yards off to Kateri’s right.

“Trunk,” Kenny called.

Everyone kept moving forward. Scenes like this were a well-practiced drill by now. Everyone knew their place, knew what to do.

“Someone in the front seat,” Kenny called a warning a few seconds later.

Kateri dropped back a few steps, covering both her partner and Jess, as they went to clear the inside of the car, Jess in front, Clinton in back. The car was clear, save for the beaten, hapless paralegal, who was stretched out across the front seat, face bloody and already bruised.

“Help me,” she pleaded, her voice broken and weak.

Guns were holstered, and Jess crouched by the open door and took the woman’s hand, “You’re safe, Rebecca. We’ve got you.”

“Go for EMS,” Hana called into a walkie-talkie from the other side of the car.

Kateri looked up and around. An ambulance along with several police cars was just pulling into the far side of the parking lot. Backup had arrived.

Once paramedics had helped Rebecca from the car and were tending to her, the car was quickly but thoroughly searched from top to bottom. There was one quite interesting discovery.

Kenny emerged from the backseat with a phone in hand. “Boss, check this out,” he called, continuing once Jess looked his way, “Tyson left the phone powered on. That’s why we were able to track the signal to the car.”

“If Tyson knew enough to power down the phones until she needed to call the judge, she wouldn’t have left it on unless she wanted us to find the car and Rebecca,” Barnes noted.

 _Smart fugitives are the worst_. Kateri stuffed her hands into her pockets and hunched her shoulders against the breeze and the rain blowing straight into her face. Her partner glanced over at her and then shifted forward slightly and took a step to the right so that, since he was about six inches taller than she was, she was slightly sheltered behind him. It was the small things like that which showed how much he cared for her.

“She’s a good Samaritan?” One of the agents from the Task Force asked sarcastically. Kateri had seen him earlier that day but couldn’t remember what his name was, if she had known in the first place.

_I wouldn’t hold my breath. Delaying tactic more likely. If we’re coming after Zayas, we’re not coming after her._

“That’s not the only reason,” Jess noted, coming around to stand between Hana and Barnes, “Check recent activity.”

Kenny did so quickly, “Got the call to the judge, and five minutes later she searched an address Brooklyn, 51 Meserole.”

“That’s her next move. I’ll see you in Brooklyn,” the Task Force agent said, starting to turn away back toward his car.

_It’s like the Gilman case last year all over again! Have you never heard of misdirection?_

“Brooklyn’s all yours,” replied Jess, “she knew we’d find that phone. She knew we’d find the address. I don’t know what her next move is, but it ain’t Meserole Street.”

“I don’t think she’s ready to give up on her son,” Jess noted to the group in general, as they returned to the SUVs, “She’s got a maternal instinct on steroids. She’ll do whatever it takes to satisfy it.”

_Oh, dear._

* * *

It was almost half past 5pm when the team reached the bus, which had been brought down from New York and parked in the parking lot of the Reading PD. The team worked for an hour, and then when it came time for someone to go get dinner, Kateri was not that surprised to hear her partner volunteer them _both_ to bring back food.

 _Not like I was doing much anyway_. She had been staring into space for a bit, trying to drudge up the names of any contacts she might have in the vicinity that might be useful for trying to track down Tyson. _Not much success._

Kateri stretched and then climbed to her feet, grabbing her jacket, while Clinton took orders. _Sandwiches, it is again. At least, it’s a different shop from lunch_.

It was a ten-minute drive to the chosen shop. Once they were in the car and in private, it was only a minute before Clinton opened his mouth to speak.

“I’m fine.” Kateri said before he could say something.

“You weren’t fine in the car earlier,” Clinton noted. There was no judgment in his tone. Between life and the job, they all had their own struggles, their own demons in different ways and to different degrees. And with her PTSS, there had been a lot of long talks, heart-to-hearts, and soul-bearing about some of Kateri’s struggles in particular.

“I was thinking about Rebecca, and my mind went to bodies in trunks, and then my brain did a … thing.” Kateri wiggled her fingers to make her point.

“Flashback?”

“Yea, smushed together things,” Kateri made a face, “You jolted me out of it before it went to far down the rabbit-trail of horrors.”

 _I hate it when my brain conspires against me_.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Clinton offered.

Kateri shook her head, “I’m alright now, really. The memories were just for a few minutes after I thought about bodies and trunks. I’m fine now.”

“Let me know if that changes. I’m always happy to talk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Update: May 3


	2. Thursday, August 22: Day 2

Morning dawned bright and early. There had been little enough to do the previous night that they had actually gotten to head off to get some sleep a little before midnight. Straws had been drawn to see which one of the men and which one of the women would have to sleep in the bus. (With 3 men and 3 women on the team, it was awkward to draw straws out of the whole pot, as that could end up with an uneven number of one gender in the hotel, sharing beds.) Clinton and Hana had drawn the short straws, while Kateri and the others actually got motel beds for the night.

It was almost 7am when Kateri, curled up on her left side facing the wall, was woken by a hand on her shoulder. She rolled over. Barnes was sitting up, her phone in hand. Jess was on his feet, and Kenny was just pushing himself to his feet.

“Time to get to work,” Barnes said.

By 7:30am, the team had reformed at the bus, and updates were passed around while they ate breakfast and fortified themselves with coffee. Rebecca Zayas was going to be released from the hospital later that day. Aside from the mental and emotional trauma of her kidnapping— _which is immense, I'd know_ —her physical injuries were miraculously minor, a minor concussion and a myriad of cuts and bruises. No new information had come from the Task Force or from the state police. There had been no sightings of Ms. Tyson for the more than 12 hours since she had abandoned Zayas and the car. Searches had revealed that Ms. Tyson had family in Baltimore, where her father was in a nursing home, but no one knew for sure if she would head their next or stay in Pennsylvania.

_Sooner or later she’ll make a mistake or someone will see her, but how many might die in the meantime?_

After lunch, Jess and Barnes left for the prison to speak with Kendall, Ms. Tyson’s son, to see if he might know anything that could help with the search, anything that could give a clue where Ms. Tyson might go next or what she might do.

Kateri and the others were left to keep working, checking in with the Task Force, following down any leads no matter how small, or just brainstorming ideas about possible routes for the fugitive. The work was slow, tedious, and mind-numbingly boring. A tip-line had been set up, and there had been plenty of calls. Most of the tips were useless or worse, but nothing could be overlooked on the off chance that there was one shred of something helpful.

After two-and-a-half hours of looking through tips and chasing down any that looked possibly helpful, Kateri felt like she was about to go cross-eyed. With a sigh that turned into a groan, she pushed away from her desk and stood, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes.

“I’m going to be seeing these in my dreams for the next week,” Kenny seemed to be feeling the same way she was.

The bus door open, and Clinton reappeared, having stepped outside to answer a call a few minutes before. “Problem?” He asked.

Kateri shook her head, moving around him to cross to the other end of the bus, “We’re just going cross-eyed going through these tip-line reports.” _Too many more and I might feel like stabbing my eyes out with a fork_. She preferred chasing down leads on foot to starring at a computer screen.

“Take a break,” Clinton looked like he probably felt the same way, “A few minutes shouldn’t make a difference.”

Hana gave a sigh of relief and also pushed away from her desk, “I need coffee if I’m going to look at those things any longer.”

Kateri smirked and chuckled. _Is coffee your solution for everything?_

Perching against one of the desks at the far end of the bus, Kateri took a deep breath and closed her eyes, trying to relax tense muscles that had gone stiff from sitting slumped at a desk for hours and barely moving. _Mother would have a cow if she saw your posture_. One hand began to try to finger comb her hair back into submission.

“Hey, Kat?” Kenny’s voice broke into her thoughts.

Kateri cracked open one eye and leaned forward enough so she could see him from where he was at his desk at the other end of the bus. “Hmmm?”

“You’re surrrreeeee you don’t know anyone in the area who could help and save us from all these tips?” From his tone, his question was mostly a joke.

Clinton laughed, sitting back down at his desk. He had heard variations on this joking question plenty of times over the past few years. _Sometimes they act like they think I know somebody everywhere!_ Variations on this question had been asked so many times it had become a running joke on the team and rarely failed to get a good snicker before everyone went back to work.

“Yes, Kenny, I’m sure,” Kateri replied, shaking her head with an amused grin, “I wish I did, though,”— _anything to save us from these tips_ —“but this isn’t DC, and it ain’t the tri-state area, either.”

“Pennsylvania’s part of the tri-state area according to some people,” Hana put in.

“Yea, that’s true,” Kateri agreed, returning to her seat next to her partner and slumping into it with a sigh. She twirled herself around so she could stretch her legs out across the aisle and put off looking at her computer for another minute or two, “but I never did much work in Penn, at least not this far south. New York and Jersey, mostly, and occasionally Connecticut or Massachusetts. Most of my web,” she wiggled her fingers to make her point, “is in New York or Jersey and only gets sparser to non-existent the farther we get from New York, except where I know people who know people.”

Clinton’s phone ringing again cut Kateri off from saying anything more. Her partner gave a sigh as he grabbed it, which made her glance over quickly at him in concern. _Your phone’s not been ringing that much, so what’s up?_ She studied him while he talked. It was Barnes, it became clear after a few moments of one-sided conversation. There was a slight pinched look around his eyes. _I’ve been doing this for forever, and I’ve got a headache. You’ve been at this for even longer than me._

“That was Barnes. Jess wants us to meet them at Denise’s place.”

Laptops were happily abandoned, and coats were gathered in case it decided to start raining again.

“Want me to drive, give you a break?” Kateri asked softly, as Clinton locked the bus door and pocketed the key.

Her partner shook his head, “I’m fine. Thanks, though, kid.”

It only took a moment’s effort to dredge up the exact same skeptical look that Clinton gave her a lot when she gave him the same answer to similar questions and sent it right back at him. Seeing his own look used against him made him smile fondly and laugh. He patted her shoulder and gestured for her to precede him toward the car, “I’m fine.”

* * *

Denise Tyson and her son, before their life had gone to pieces, had lived at 570 Pear Street, Apartment #4. Aside from Kateri’s dislike of the thought of living on a street named after a fruit, _which is just too weird_ (she had opinions about street names), the street and apartment building were nice. It was an older neighborhood, but the buildings and land were well kept-up.

It was 3:30pm when they arrived at the apartment complex. Barnes and Jess hadn’t arrived yet, or at least their car wasn’t visible, so the others waited by the cars for them to arrive. Warm sun had replaced the previous day’s rain, and it was actually a nice day to be outside, _especially after starring at my laptop for hours and hours and getting to the point of wanting to put my own eyes out_. The four of them spent the time waiting talking quietly. The discussion rabbit-trailed from talk of the case to ideas for dinner ( _thank you, Kenny_ ) to plans for when the case was finished.

Ten minutes later their teammates’ car turned into the parking lot. _Let’s get this show on the road_. There was a quick briefing in the parking lot on what Kateri and the others had learned from the tip line— _not bloody much_ —and what information Jess and Barnes had gotten from Kendall. The boy had confirmed their suspicion that Ms. Tyson did not know anyone in Brooklyn, and he also stated that he had no idea where his mother might go next. She had no boyfriend and no friends at the hair shop or at church that she might go to for help.

Searching fugitive’s dwellings was one of least favorite parts of her job in Kateri’s opinion. Despite the fact that she knew that the team could get vital clues from such a search, it still felt like an invasion of privacy. _Goodness knows I wouldn’t want even the others to look through some of my stuff_.

Denise Tyson’s apartment was quiet as a tomb and almost frozen in time, undisturbed since the fateful day earlier that week. There were small signs that the apartment had once been a much-loved family residence. Family photos were stuck with magnets on the fridge. There was a half-empty box of Fruit Loops on the kitchen counter and a can of tabasco sauce by the microwave. Family photos and other art were scattered across the walls and table tops. Plants were left unwatered in the living room, and there were shelves full of papers and books. By one wall, a pair of shoes lay abandoned, on its side as if kicked off casually by a kid.

The whole scene was terribly sad.

It was a two-floor apartment, which was unusual and made Kateri wonder why it was called an apartment complex at all. _Whoever heard of multi-floor apartments? Shouldn’t this be like a town house or something?_

“Ladies at the salon said that Denise only worked when Kendall was in school,” Hana stated, returning to the apartment. She had stepped out a few minutes earlier to make a call. The whole team was still upstairs looking around the living room. “4pm, she’d hang up her hair dryer and head home to put out his cookies and milk. No fraternizing outside of work. No girls’ night. Only her birthday.”

“Yea, that pretty much jives with her phone and email history,” Kenny noted.

Clinton touched his partner’s shoulder and motioned with his head back toward the stairs. Kateri nodded and followed him downstairs, Kenny’s voice fading into the background as they got further apart. The downstairs had less habitable space than the upstairs, and Kateri glanced through the other rooms quickly while her partner headed off into Kendall’s bedroom.

_Storage._

_Storage._

_Laundry room._

_More storage._

_Maintenance._

_Mother’s bedroom. We’ll get there in a minute_.

There wasn’t anything of note in them, except for Ms. Tyson’s room which the boss would want to have a hand in searching, and Kateri hadn’t been really expecting to find anything in the other rooms and only checked them out of habitual carefulness.

Her eyes bugged out, and she stopped dead in her tracks as she came to the doorway of Kendall’s room and looked around the decently-sized bedroom, piled high with stuff.

“Oh. My. Word.”

The bedroom had normal bedroom furniture and a closet full of stuff. It was what was piled on those pieces of furniture and what was in that closet which was striking. The chest of drawers had a decent sized TV, a nice radio, and several stacks of CDs. A good-looking computer and monitor with several fancy speakers were sitting on the desk, and a fancy-looking bike was parked by the chest of drawers out of the walking path. The closet was full of clothes and fancy looking shoes amongst various other bits and bobs.

“Bloody h**l,” Kateri whispered, mouth falling half open in astonishment, “Where did she get the money for this stuff on a hairdresser’s pay?”

Clinton snorted, “Good question.” His eyes went past her, “Watch yourself.”

_Huh?_

Kateri glanced over her shoulder and saw her boss right behind her. _You did the stopping in the doorway thing again_. In her astonishment, she hadn’t noticed the footsteps right behind her. _Good grief, you could get yourself killed doing that_.

“Sorry, boss,” Kateri took a few steps into the room and ducked around her partner until she found a spot out of the way.

“Welcome to a teenage wet-dream!” Clinton greeted Jess and Barnes, “Kid’s got 8 pairs of Jordans, matching ball caps: Supreme, Undefeated.”

 _That’s what those shoes are._ If they weren’t running shoes or hiking boots, Kateri could care less when it came to shoes.

“I’m guessing those things are expensive?” Jess, who’d stopped in the doorway, asked.

“Wait until Tali gets older,” Clinton replied wryly. _Ah, the joys and trials of having kids_. “Check that out: that bike retails around a grand.”

Kateri’s eyes nearly bugged out again. _A grand???_ _That’s my food bill for like two to three months_.

“How’d he afford this stuff?” Asked Barnes, who’d been looking through the stuff on Kendall’s desk.

 _Good question_.

Kateri crossed the room to take a look at the stereo, side-stepping to avoid bumping into Hana who had just come downstairs with Kenny.

“His mother put it on her credit card.”

“I wouldn’t want to pay her monthly bill,” Kateri noted wryly. The stereo and TV were nice and new, expensive, too. She couldn’t imagine having enough money to burn to fork over to buy all this stuff. Her TV was comparatively small and old. She hadn’t gotten a new laptop in several years, not that she really needed one, and the speakers she used for her music were at least a decade old.

“Kendall’s the center of his mother’s world. She’d sacrifice her own comfort for her son. She’s over compensating for something,” Jess noted.

 _Definitely over-compensating. Barnes and the boss love their kids, would do anything for them, but I can’t see them doing this. Good gracious_.

“Well,” Barnes sighed, “at least he felt bad about. He said he did the robbery to help her out.”

_That logic astounds me._

_Mother in financial help._

_Therefore, I’m going to go rob someone._

_Really?_

_Try getting a job._

“He could have sold some of this swag,” Clinton mused.

“He could get good money for that stereo system and radio or the TV,” Kateri agreed, gesturing with one hand in the direction of the desk and chest of drawers.

Jess shook his head, “And risk hurting his mother’s feelings?”

 _Compromises have to be made when the bills are tight. Everyone has to chip in where possible, if the kids are big enough_.

Searching Ms. Tyson’s bedroom downstairs was the next task.[1] Kateri tagged along with Jess and her partner, thinking she might be of use, if for nothing else than preventing the boys from being forced to look through a woman’s underwear drawer.

The bedroom was lived in and slightly messy, though more orderly than the rest of the house. Jess settled down on the bed to look through the bedside table. Kateri started with the two chests of drawers, and Clinton went for the closet.

There was little interesting to find. Clothes, underclothes, feminine things, boxes of miscellaneous stuff pushed in for storage, more pictures of Kendall on the top, a few hairbrushes piled next to the pictures. Nothing of it was out of the ordinary or screamed, “I’m about to go off the rails and take hostages.” The closet and attached master bathroom were also singularly uninteresting.

Only Jess, sitting on the bed and starting to compile his goodie box of clues that helped him make his deductions, seemed to have found something. He had discovered a stack of notebooks, the contents of which looked like a cross between a sketchpad and a photo album, Kateri saw on one pass by the bed, and he wasn’t done looking yet.

“What do we have here?” Jess said quietly, a minute later.

Kateri and her partner looked up at the boss’ quiet voice and came over to see what he had found. It was a small wooden box. Inside was a small bag holding a fancy lookin’, misshapen spoon, which Clinton immediately identified as a baby spoon.

“Precious baby spoon,” Jess added, studying it closely, “Sterling silver. Look at the engraving.” He held the spoon up so that they could see it.

“It’s for a girl,” Jess continued, “At least 100 years old by the looks of it. Not something that Denise planned to leave behind.”

More searching revealed little else of note in the house, and soon the team returned to the bus. They all hoped that they would get a break in the case soon, some clue from the house or some clue from without of where Ms. Tyson might be going or what she might do next.

* * *

[1] In the episode, the scene in Ms. Tyson’s bedroom ends with Kenny bringing news that Tyson had been spotted in York, PA, referencing the early morning smash and grab. If you can stop the episode at the right point to get a look at the white boards in the bus, one can see that the smash-and-grab happened on 5:35am on Friday morning. Given the succession of scenes with Kendall at the prison and the team at the apartment, those events would also need to happen on Friday. It does not make sense that the team would wait to search two days after the hunt begin to talk to Kendall and search Ms. Tyson’s apartment, so I have chosen to separate out that ending with Kenny’s news.


	3. Friday, August 23: Day 3

Morning came bright and early as usual, just this time it was somewhat less bright and more early than usual. Kenny and Kateri had drawn the short straws the night before when the decision had finally been made to hit the sack for the night. Sleeping in the bus wasn’t the problem, though.

Kateri started awake mid-way through the night. She had taken the top bunk again to save Kenny the necessary contortions of sleeping up top and lay awake for a few moments, starring at the ceiling and wondering what had awakened her.

The cause of her premature awakening was revealed a moment later, when she keyed into the noises going on around her. Kenny was still in bed, but his breathing was too fast, too uneven for sleep. _Nightmare_. She realized. She’d woken up too many times the same way.

There were a few more gasped breaths, full of tears. He was trying to be quiet, probably thinking she was still asleep, and she wondered whether she should say something or let him have his privacy. That decision become unnecessary a moment later when, with a quiet curse, Kenny rose, grabbed his boots, and disappeared outside the curtain.

Kateri pushed herself up onto her elbows, careful not to hit her head on the ceiling, and titled her watch under the little emergency light above her head until she could see the time. _4am. I can survive on 4 hours of sleep for one night_. She had a feeling no more sleep would be forthcoming. Hearing Kenny pacing the length of the bus wouldn’t keep her awake, since she was used to sleeping through noise as long as she trusted who was making the noise. It was concern for Kenny that would keep her up.

Kateri counted off several more minutes in her head, and still Kenny kept pacing. _As long as he doesn’t lose it or go outside, I’ll leave him be for now_. She’d had plenty of early mornings and long nights after nightmares before when her claustrophobia or her PTSS were rearing their ugly heads. Sometimes she appreciated quiet, sympathetic company, and sometimes she preferred to just be left alone.

Several more minutes passed, and finally there was the sound of the bus door opening and closing. With a sigh and a groan Kateri rubbed her eyes and then scrambled down to the floor. The application of a flashlight to the scene allowed her to find her boots and her flannel shirt. It probably hadn’t cooled down enough over night to need a jacket, but she had stripped down (on top) to her t-shirt to sleep, and it had been breezy enough earlier to not want to go outside in that.

Kenny hadn’t gone far and was just a stone’s throw away from the bus, leaning against the hood of one of the cars and starring off into space. He looked up as the bus door opened and Kateri trotted down the steps.

“Did I wake you?” Kenny asked as Kateri approached.

 _Yes, not that I’m telling you that_.

Kateri shrugged, “I’m a light sleeper, and I heard the door. You alright?” It was an answer and a non-answer in one, and one that would hopefully not make him feel bad for waking her.

“Just a nightmare,” Kenny replied, his expressive face going pensive, “Couldn’t get it out of my head. Wanted some air.”

Kateri sighed, giving a half-smile of commiseration. _I know the feeling_. “I know what it’s like. Want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Mind if I stay with you?” Kateri asked. _Not going to push company if you don’t feel like it._

“Course not.”

Kateri leaned against the hood of the car beside him, and a half-an-hour passed in companionable silence. Aside from occasional glances over at her friend, Kateri let her mind wander to other things … besides nightmares— _one flashback this week is quite enough, thank you_ —or work.

“I’ll start the coffee,” Kateri said, after they went back inside, “unless you want to go back to bed.”

The answer to that was a resounding no, as she had figured, so Kateri started a big pot of coffee. The two of them could start on it, and there would be some left for the others … probably … when they arrived … sometime. A few minutes later, coffee in hand, Kateri sat down at her desk and booted up her laptop.

_Time to get to work._

_The sooner we get a break, the better_.

* * *

The big break did not come until early that afternoon. The team along with a handful of local cops and agents from the kidnapping Task Force were gathered in the bus, going over what data they had, any new tips that had come in, and the info learned from the search of Ms. Tyson’s place. Kenny was sitting at the conference table, feet propped up on the table. His laptop was sitting beside him, a search currently running. His hands were folded over his chest, and his chin had sunk down, as if he had succumbed in an impromptu cat nap.

Kateri was sitting at her desk, head propped up on one hand, starring at a series of new and unhelpful tips. Despite the fact that she and Kenny were semi-frequently yawning the heads off all day like two college kid who had pulled an all-nighter doing homework, she had remained resolutely mum about their early morning and the cause thereof. It had only taken one extremely politely rebuffed question for Clinton to get the hint, and despite the multiple refills of coffee … along with multiple small water bottles … he hadn’t asked her about what had happened again.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a loud beeping coming from Kenny’s direction broke the silence of the room. No one had said anything for a bit, and the only other noises besides typing sounds were mechanical.

Kenny must have fallen asleep, considering the magnitude of the ensuing startled jolt. Kateri had turned automatically at the noise and gasped aloud, as his chair tottered, his center of balance thrown off by his feet on the table. _He’s going to fall. He’s going to fall. Bloody h**l!!!_ She was too far out of reach to even try to help.

Jess, however, was closer. His reaction time, probably learned in part and increased in speed by his time as a parent, was faster. With a lunge he was able to catch the back of Kenny’s rolling chair and give the younger man enough time to get his feet on the floor and grab hold of the table, which was thankfully bolted to the floor, to steady himself.

“Bloody h**l,” Kateri breathed a sigh of relief when Kenny was no longer in danger of going splat on the floor or hitting his head in the close quarters.

“You okay, Kenny?” Jess asked.

The younger man nodded, slightly wild-eyed, not that Kateri could blame him. _That was a quite … dramatic awakening_. After a few depth breaths, he steadied and turned to his computer. A few pressed buttons revealed the cause of the earlier alert.

“She’s been spotted!” He crowed, suddenly and totally awake.

Kateri’s eyes widen. _It’s about bloody time_.

A few more clicks brought up a security camera video on one of the big screens, and the whole team gathered around. The video had been taken early that morning, less than an hour after Kenny and Kateri had started to work, and the high angle video showed a store-front full of fancy and impractical looking clothes. With the video paused, a woman was paused in the act of getting ready to throw a brick through the store window.

“These were taken at 5:35am,” Kenny said, starting the video, “The police in York, about 50 miles away, responded to a smash-and-grab at a local store.” He paused the video when one frame showed Ms. Tyson’s face in detail, “She stole a pair of high heels and a matching purse.”

Kateri felt and looked flummoxed. _Fugitive on the run, and you steel high heels and a purse?_ She glanced over at her partner, who looked somewhat puzzled, as well.

“Is she going out on a date?” Hana asked, putting the oddity of the situation into actual words.

“Wouldn’t be my gear of choice for life on the run,” Replied Barnes dryly.

“Same,” Kateri agreed, a note of sarcasm leaching into her voice, “A wee bit too impractical for that.”

“She have any connections in York?” Asked Jess.

“Yea!” Kenny exclaimed. He had been perched on the table opposite the screen displaying the video but rose and turned back toward the screen, “She has a York number in her contacts.” A long list of contact info from Ms. Tyson’s phone appeared on the computer screen. A little scrolling later, one name was highlighted. “Here. Michelle Carter.”

“Okay,” Jess instructed, “I want a sweep of all security video in the York area. Let’s close the net.”

* * *

The team started the sweep of the security video during the drive to York, which was an hour south-west of Reading. Michelle Carter’s home was a nice, brick house with an interesting collection of flowers and large green shrubs. She was home when the team arrived, and Jess and Barnes went to speak with her, while the others remained by the cars to keep looking over local security footage.

Kateri blinked several times when she found her eyes going unfocused as she starred at her tablet. _Oh, I’m tired._ She groaned internally to herself. _And it’s only 3:30 in the afternoon. You have been up for almost 12 hours, though_.

“Anything?” Her partner’s voice broke into her thoughts. Kateri glanced up. She was sitting in backseat of Kenny and Hana’s SUV, legs hanging out the opening door. _Last time I saw you, you were up by Miss Carter’s car. When did you move?_

Kateri shook her head. “Nah, not yet. Just endless variations of normal goings-on, and neither hide nor hair of Tyson.”

Barnes and the boss were still talking to Miss Carter, and occasionally a few of their words drifted across the lawn, but it wasn’t enough for Kateri to be able to make much sense of the conversation. _We’ll get the run-down when they’re done or in the car on the way to wherever’s next._

Suddenly, Kenny, who had been wandering around both to check a few things and keep himself awake, reappeared with a crow of delight, “Got her! Only an hour ago.” He turned his tablet so they all could see the video of Ms. Tyson getting into a car at a gas station.

“What’s the license plate?” Kateri asked, “I’ve got that database up already?” She’d stopped to check a couple of suspicious cars during her latest round of trolling through security camera footage.

Kenny rattled the license plate off to quickly for her to catch it all. _Slow down, buster. We’ve both had too little sleep for motor mouths_. “One more time, please.”

Kenny repeated the number, and this time Kateri got it into the database fully. A minute or two later, her tablet chimed with the results. “Okkaayy,” she drawled, giving herself a shake to repel her tiredness, “The car is registered to a Johnny Lee Vance. His name’s being flagged, but this bloody thing isn’t saying for what.”

“I’ll check,” Clinton said.

“Where is that?” Kateri looked back over at Kenny, making a vague gesture in the direction of his tablet and thereby to the footage.

“Shiloh, not far from here,” Kenny’s voice trailed off when the conversation with Carter wrapped up and Barnes and the boss started over. He trotted off towards them, leaving Clinton and Kateri to trail along behind.

 _I’ve got a bad feeling about this_. Clinton’s attention was still on his phone, even as he walked, and suddenly he got that look in his eyes that indicated whatever he had found about Vance wasn’t good. _In the slightest_.

“Another spotting,” Kenny said, holding out his tablet for the other two to see, “An hour ago over in a gas station in Shiloh. She got into a car.”

“License plate traces to a Johnny Lee Vance,” Clinton filled them in on what he had just found, “A registered sex offender, rape and sexual assault.”

_Oh, bloody h**l. Reason #498 of why hitchhiking is one of the worst ideas in the entire universe._

_You might end up in a car with an axe murderer … or a bloody sex offender._

That wasn’t something Kateri would wish on her worst enemy.

* * *

The net was closing slowly but surely in on the runaway Ms. Tyson. Before it got lost in a maze of other cars of similar make, model, and color, the team was able to track Vance’s car long enough to know that it had headed south out of Shiloh. The guess was that Tyson was heading toward Baltimore.

That guess was supported, when less than an hour later an update arrived from the Maryland State Police that Vance’s car had been discovered at a rest area on Route 30, not far over the state line from Pennsylvania.

 _9 miles away. We’re catching up_.

Clinton accelerated to keep pace with Barnes and the others in the leading SUV, and Kateri flipped on their SUV’s flashing lights, not that there was much traffic on these back roads which needed to get out of the way.

“Route 30,” Kateri mused, “Vance really was trying to stay under the radar anyway. That’s nowhere close to the shortest route south.” She’d had to drive the route to Baltimore too many times before Jess had finally gotten her side-jobs with Organized Crime stopped. _Unless there was an accident to avoid, I’d only take Route 30 if I wanted to make an already horrible trip take twice as long._

“Assuming Tyson actually is heading to Baltimore,” Hana put in from the backseat.

“True enough,” Kateri replied. _But where else would she be going?_

The others were already out of the other SUV and heading toward the suspect car, as the following SUV pulled to a stop. Kateri hopped out as soon as Clinton had the breaks on, scanning the surroundings carefully with one hand on the grip of her Glock. She came around the front of the car and fell into step beside her partner.

_Why does it have to be in the middle of the woods?_

Kateri preferred concrete jungles to actual forests. The closest she spent to actually living in the country with nature was on the rare occasions she was able to go back to the reservation in Quebec.

The car was called clear, but as they got close, Kateri heard the fateful words, “Blood on the front seat.”

 _Oh, bloody hell._ One small woman in a car with a man she didn’t know was a pig, Kateri had a bad feeling how this might end.

Kenny had crouched down by the edge of the pavement near the car, “More blood over here.”

Now came Kateri’s least favorite part: searching the woods. Thanks to her partner, she now knew how to handle herself in the woods, but she still disliked having to do so.

Hiking trails were one thing.

Regular woods were another.

The team spread out into a line, Clinton and Kateri on the far left and Jess on the far right, and moved into the woods, guns drawn.

The problem with searching woods—one of multiple problems, actually—was the noise. When searching houses or other regular buildings, you always had to keep where your teammates were in mind, and then you listened for the little noises that were not in keeping with that. Soft breaths, unexpected creaks, a squeaky hinge. It was the little things that sometimes gave you vital clues, that sometimes gave you the split-second warning needed to keep yourself out of an ambush. In the woods, there was just so much extra noise. Leaves crackled or branches cracked with almost every step Kateri took.

_At least the sight lines are better._

Clinton slowed by a patch of grass, and Kateri automatically paused beside him but kept scanning the vicinity.

“We’ve got a trail here,” he shouted. Kateri glanced down long enough to notice the fresh blood on a weed.

 _I hope that’s not Tyson’s blood_.

Guns were raised, and everyone scanned the woods more closely. They were catching up slowly but surely. The net was closing.

Suddenly, there was a crack of branch from up ahead and then a flash of movement. Maybe 30 feet in front of the team’s current position, a big man in a khaki jacket was hobbling along a perpendicular course. _Vance_. Kateri recognized him from the photos on his arrest record.

“FBI. Stop!” Went the chorus of shouts from the agents.

Besides being a pig, Vance was not good at following directions either and did not stop. Kateri was just lining up her target picture where she could take a shot and was tracking Vance’s slow movements, when she noticed out of the corner of her eye that Kenny had disappeared out of line.

Her gun lowered a fraction, as she tried to find where he had disappeared off, too. Pulling the trigger was too risky if she didn’t know that Kenny was well-clear of the line of fire. Nobody wanted a repeat of the near-disaster from May 2018, least of all Kateri herself.

The question of where Kenny went was answered a few moments later when Kenny exploded out of cover and tackled Vance to the ground.

 _That’s one way of solving that problem_.

Clinton and Kateri were the closest to where Kenny and Vance had landed in a sprawl on the forest floor. With one cocked fist from Kenny, Vance yielded without a fight.

 _Not so big now are you, now that your opponent’s actually your own size_.

“Where is she?” Demanded Jess.

“She’s gone. I don’t know,” Vance replied, a thread of pain in his voice.

“What are you doing out here?” Was Jess’ follow-up question, and one Kateri was wondering herself.

“I’m lookin’ for my keys,” the two fist-fulls that Kenny had of his jacket seemed to be incentivizing Vance to cooperate, “Hey, I’m bleedin’ here.”

 _That actually sounds like good news to me. Means that probably wasn’t Tyson’s blood back in the car_. As long as Vance wasn’t about to bite the dust, Kateri couldn’t bring herself to care if Tyson had done him a little damage. Knowing him, he probably deserved it.

"She shot me,” Vance continued, “Threw my keys in the woods, and ran off. Said she’s going to Baltimore.”

_I love it when perps volunteer info we don’t ask!_

“Why were you runnin’?” Kenny growled, shaking Vance.

“Thought you were after me,” Vance whined, “You know …”

“You try to rape her?” Barnes asked, seeming to follow the low-life’s train of thought or unspoken words.

Vance snickered, a sound that made Kateri’s teeth grind, “Hey, well, nobody rides for free right?”

Kateri’s lip curled, and her grip tightened reflexively on her gun. _What a piece of work!_

Jess turned toward the local police who had followed the team int other woods, “He’s all yours.”

Kenny was less than gentle in dragging Vance to his feet and pushing him toward the keeping of the local cops. _Good riddance to bad rubbish_. People like Vance made her skin crawl. Slowly, Kateri reholstered her gun, once Vance was well-clear of the team and clearly under the control of the cops.

 _Good riddance_.

* * *

The distances between stops were short enough, thankfully, on this hunt that the team was able to get the bus brought down from York to Baltimore and get set up in Baltimore well before sunset. It also helped that it was August, and not the middle of winter.

The place the bus had been parked was on an old street next to a massive, four-story warehouse-like building that had long been abandoned by the looks of it. The sight of the building had been enough to make Kateri laugh aloud as she had climbed from their SUV, amused by the incongruity of the FBI bus next to a building that looked like a prime place for mischief to occur.

 _It looks more suited to a meet from my undercover days_.

The name the nurse from York had given the team for Kendall’s father was Damon Johnson. Damon Johnson was, unfortunately, not that uncommon of a name, as Hana soon discovered after starting her search for _the_ Damon Johnson they were looking for.

“19 Damon Johnsons in Baltimore. Another 22 in the rest of Maryland,” Hana announced to the team, adding then as an aside to Kenny, who was updating the timeline white-board, “Also found a Damon’s Maryland Crab Cakes Joint.”

“Let’s see if they deliver,” Kenny declared, turning from his scribing for a moment.

 _No, let’s not._ Kateri, her back to the pair, made a disgusted face. She was quite allergic to Crustaceans, a type of shellfish, of which crab were a sub-type, and much preferred NOT breaking out in hives and itching as if she’d bathed in poison ivy.

Jess was hovering in the doorway, his thinking face on, “Denise Tyson’s arrest for attempted murder was what, fifteen years ago?”

Kateri looked over and went to start pulling up the file to check, but her partner was faster, “October 2004.”

Jess was pacing slowly between the rows of chairs, “And a few months later she follows Damon up to Pennsylvania to get him to own up to his paternal responsibilities.”

_Are you talking to us, boss, or to yourself?_

“The two events could be connected,” Barnes posited.

There was a long moment of silence, as Jess mulled that over, and then he asked, “Does that file say who she was accused of assaulting?”

Kateri swiveled her chair around. _Where are you going with this?_ She wondered.

“The file is sealed,” Clinton replied, twisting around to look at the boss, “but it does say that her bail was paid for by her father, Glanville Tyson.”

“Him, I can find,” noted Hana, turning back to her computers.

* * *

And find Mr. Tyson, Hana did, locating an address for him in a local nursing home a few minutes later. Leaving Hana and Kenny to keep working at the bus, Barnes and the boss with Kateri and Clinton accompanying them went off to speak to Mr. Tyson.

Mr. Tyson was a friendly-looking but frail older gentleman, who was happy to talk to them. “Oh, I remember,” he replied, when asked about the assault case, “Denise was six months pregnant with Kendall. Damon came by to get money for drugs. She wouldn’t give it. They got into a fight….”

Jess turned around, as Mr. Tyson was still talking, and gave Clinton a look. The two were standing along the back wall of the room, waiting patiently. Clinton glanced over at Kateri and jerked his head toward the door, and she followed him out.

Several hallways away from Tyson’s room, they found a quiet place to stand, and Clinton put a call into the State’s Attorney’s Office. Kateri had nothing else to do for the moment, so she pulled out her work phone and began scrolling through her email. A burst of horrific noise, quickly lowered in volume, made her look up. Clinton was pulling his phone away from his ear with a disgusted look on his face.

Kateri raised one eyebrow in silent question.

“I got transferred, and now I’m on hold.” He replied.

“Ah,” Kateri drawled, lowering her gaze back to her own phone, “Funnnnnn. They could at least use half-decent hold music that doesn’t make listeners want to stab themselves in the ears with a tuning fork.”

“I think that might be too much to hope for,” Clinton noted, with a wry smile, keeping the phone up near his ear so that he could still hear when an actual person came on the line but not so close to deafen himself, “So, what do you have against crab?”

_Wait, what?_

After the discussion of hold music, the non-sequitur about crabs made Kateri look up and stare at him in absolute puzzlement. Distracted, she forgot temporarily about the passing discussion at the bus.

“Hmmm?”

“Back in the bus, Hana mentioned the crab cakes joint, and you looked like you’d bitten into a lemon. Not a fan of crab?”

_Ahhhh, yes._

_More like it’s not a fan of me_.

Kateri slipped her phone back into her pocket and then stuffed her hands into her jacket pockets with the shrug. “I don’t mind the taste,” she replied, “It’s just that I’m allergic.”

Clinton’s gaze sharpened, protective instincts coming to the fore, “How did I not know this before? Allergic as in …”

Shellfish allergies could be quite severe, as in anaphylactic shock severe in some people.

“Because of all the wide variety of things we’ve eaten on these trips, I’m not sure crab cakes ever came up before. Eating crabs makes me look and feel like I can’t tell the difference between English Ivy and poison ivy.”

Before her partner could say anything more, an actual human voice came from his phone, and Clinton’s attention shifted back to his call. Listening to just his side of the conversation was relatively unhelpful, but the look on his face indicated that he was getting some helpful information. A minute after he finished the call, Barnes and Jess appeared at the other end of the hall. Clinton with Kateri trailing behind moved to join them.

“I talked to the State’s Attorney who prosecuted Denise. He said that Damon was high when he testified before the grand jury. That’s why they kicked him. He’s texting me Damon’s current address.”

_Was high??? Seriously, dude!_

The four agents started to make their way outside, and Kateri dropped back next to Barnes to allow Clinton and Jess, who were talking, to walk together.

“Here,” Clinton continued, gesturing to his phone, “He’s in Owings Mills. Nice, not where I’d expect to find that pipe-head.”

 _Uh, okkkkaaayyyy. If you say so._ Kateri could opine on neighborhoods in or around large sections of New York City, but in the Baltimore area, she was clueless.

“How do you know it’s nice?” Jess asked, apparently just as puzzled.

“I had a girlfriend from Baltimore,”

“You never told me about her,” Jess noted, shooting his brother-in-law a look.

“Ohh, I guess I didn’t,” Clinton replied.

Since she was walking behind them and not next to them, Kateri didn’t even have to try to muffle her smirk and look of amusement.

* * *

At the nursing home, Clinton and Kateri parted ways from Barnes and the boss, who left for Owings Mills to speak with Damon Johnson. Considering it was rush hour on a workday and they were leaving town with the traffic, Kateri had a bad feeling their trip might take a while.

The traffic was less horrific than Kateri had feared, and not long after she and Clinton had returned from a dinner run—burgers and fries, thankfully, not anything crab related—Jess and Barnes also returned with updates about Damon and some surprising information about Karina, Ms. Tyson’s other kid.

“Denise’s old neighbors in Baltimore, almost done. She moved around a lot,” Hana declared mid-way through the evening.

Kateri looked up at the sudden voices long enough to see if she was needed, concluded that she was not, and returned to her burger and fries. She had stopped working long enough to eat so that she did not get grease all over her laptop.

“Send agents to each one,” the boss ordered, “in case she reaches out to them.”

A sudden indignant squawk from behind her made up look up again a second later.

_What the?_

Kenny had wandered off somewhere to do something a few minutes earlier and had just returned to his seat next to Hana and apparently stolen food off of her plate, which thus drew the indignant squawk and an admonishment to “eat your own fries.”

“I would,” Kenny shot back, “but you ate them all.”

Kateri felt the urge to drawl out a teasingly reproving “Chillldddreeeennnn” but, given that her mouth was full of hamburger, resisted the urge. She settled for rolling her eyes instead.

Several minutes passed quietly. Kateri finished her food and set back to work, checking in with the agents watching Damon Johnson’s place, and took a stack of the addresses of Tyson’s former neighbors off of Hana’s metaphorical plate and started the process of dispatching agents to sit on their places, too.

“Hey, Crosby,” Jess called down the bus, “Check out this photo.”

Kenny looked up with a start, wiped the grease on his hands off on his britches, and headed down to where Jess was sitting. A discussion of photos and shadows and photo editing software followed, and the resulting conclusion was that Karina, Tyson’s daughter, had been photoshopped into the photo that the team had gotten from Glanville Tyson.

 _Now that’s just weird_.

What Jess said following that was the real kicker, “If that’s her daughter,”— _what the h**l is going on??_ —“these sketches of the young girl are like she doesn’t know what Karina looks like, and she’s trying to figure it out.”

Now Kateri was very curious and very puzzled and turned to listen in. Jess came back down the bus to Hana’s station, Barnes and Kenny following.

“As if she last saw her when she was two years old,” Barnes concluded.

Kateri scooted her chair over to the center table to get a better look at the sketches that had been culled from the notebooks found in Ms. Tyson’s bedside table from her Reading apartment. She felt a burst of pity at those words. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be a mother separated from her kid.

“Exactly,” Jess exclaimed, “She lied about Karina living with her. She made up some fairy tale about Damon coming back. This photo, look, look,” he grabbed the photo under discussion and pulled it over, “This is her dream, happy family, but she lost her daughter, and then her son went to jail. That’s what broke her emotionally, her dream unraveled and her with it.”

_That’s the struggle when life collapses around your ears._

_Do you collapse with it, or do you mourn, pick yourself up, and keep on going?_

_There’s always something else to live for if you look hard enough_.


	4. Saturday, August 24: Day 4

Morning came bright and early, though not so early as Friday, thankfully. The first several hours passed slowly, but late-morning things began to get interesting. It was about 11am, and the whole team was bent over their own work, when suddenly Kenny’s laptop dinged loudly again. This time there was a much less dramatic reaction out of him, and there were no near disasters, but the noise did make everyone look up.

Kenny opened whatever had caused the notification noise, and a moment later his eyes widened into an “Oh, ****” look, “Another sighting, boss. Home invasion.”

Kateri’s brain hit the pause button. One half of her was stuck on, _Bloody h**l, that’s not good._ The other half of her was saying _Home invasion. Of whose? That doesn’t make sense, does it?_ There had not been a single report of any trouble or any sighting at all the houses that agents were currently watching.

“Did she go after Johnson?” The boss asked, rising from his seat and coming over.

Kenny shook his head, “Not Johnson. Not any of her neighbors. Intel’s still comin’ in.”

“Let’s go!”

More information became available on the drive from the bus to the scene of the crime. The team had piled into two separate SUVs, but with Barnes’ phone and Bluetooth— _what a wonderful invention!!!_ —both cars could still be updated at the same time.

The home invasion was not quite a home invasion but had come about after Ms. Tyson had tricked her way inside with the old “My car broke down, and my phone is dead” trick. The connection of the home-owners to Tyson was through the mysterious Karina, not Johnson. Ms. Tyson had not appreciated what she had heard from the two former foster parents of her long-lost daughter and had subsequently gone … kinetic, _as Clinton would say_.

_It’s a miracle they’re not dead._

_Ms. Tyson’s the avenging mother-bear figure._

_She’s not worried about collateral_.

The house was on what would usually be a nice quiet street. It was a nice brick house with a neat yard and pretty flower beds and seemed straight out of someone’s desire for a white picket fence and the 2.5 kids— _how does one have 2.5 kids anyway? Never understood that part_ —and the dogs … until you got to all the cops. All the police cars and FBI trucks rather ruined the serenity of the street and the picture-perfect nature of the house.

Barnes and Jess went into the house to talk to the couple, while the others remained outside getting updates from the cops and listening to the handful of witness statements. When the two returned, neither of them looked particularly happy, and after hearing the rundown of what the foster parents—Bill and Carol Russo—had said, Kateri wasn’t feeling in a good mood particularly either.

Denise had come looking for Karina, trying to put together the shattered pieces of her family and her world. Mr. and Mrs. Russo had been of no use in her quest. They had no clue where Karina was and could do nothing to help either Denise or the team for one main BLOODY reason. The Russo did not know where Karina was because they GAVE HER BACK to the foster system because they could NOT DEAL WITH HER.

Such terribly familiar statements struck a cord within Kateri and made her both angry and terribly sad.

_Parenting is bloody difficult some times, but you don’t get to turn in your kid for a bloody do-over just because it’s bloody hard._

_Kids are a blessing, a gift._

_They aren’t bloody commodities to be traded in like bloody clothes until you find the perfect fit or the dog you take back to the bloody pound._

_Everyone wants the picture-perfect kids, not the trouble ones with the honest struggles._

_I’m sure my parents, God rest their souls, wanted to strangle or shake me a few times, but they wouldn’t have given me up or traded me in for the world._

_Bloody h**l!_

Karina had been angry and extremely reluctant to trust the latest of her foster parents. There were no pictures of her, because she had refused to allow her picture to be taken even with the other children. That just made Kateri even angrier and sadder.

_And you’re really bloody surprised about that?_

_Get passed around from home to home, no idea what your new set of ‘parents’ ‘ll be like, no idea what siblings you’ll get, and you’d have trust issues, too!!!!_

_Anger can just be a defensive measure. You hold everyone at a distance, until you know it’s safe._

_And if some are nice but you’re not sure about the others, you don’t want to let anyone in and risk getting hurt if you might get the boot._

_Trading her in for a shiner model wouldn’t exactly have helped with those anger or trust issues._

_Are you complete and utter morons?_

_Ten years in foster care was sometimes bad enough, but sixteen years … ugh._

Kateri was only listening with half an ear by that point as Jess wrapped up the impromptu briefing. Karina was Denise’s whole reason for coming to Baltimore in the first place. The conclusion was that if the team could find Karina first, then they would find Denise. The problem would be finding Karina. The next step in trying to track down Karina was paying a visit to the Baltimore Department of Child Services, which did not make the bloody situation any better either.

Kateri spent the drive to the local Child Services office in morose silence, starring out the window and letting the scenery flash across her eyes while her mind wandered. Clinton and Kenny were talking quietly and occasionally shooting concerned glances her direction—she could feel the weight of their gaze—but neither of them had pressed her on her mood … yet. She was glad for that, though she was quite sure another conversation would be forthcoming at some point, because it gave her time to try to distance herself from the case … at least in her own head. She was taking Karina’s situation personally as a fellow foster kid, and letting cases become personal in their line of work was potentially problematic, at best, and dangerous, at worst.

“I’m going to stay with the cars,” Kateri finally spoke quietly as they pulled into the parking lot.

“That’s fine,” Clinton replied, then adding carefully, “You alright?”

Kateri shrugged, “Just want some space.” _Space from social services, space from crazy parents, space from this case_. The statement could be interpreted in a lot of ways, but it—or variations on it—was something she usually said when she was feeling claustrophobic, so Clinton’s resulting puzzled look was understandable, but she was too … take-your-pick … to explain.

“I’ll stay, too. I can get this done faster if I’m not wandering around,” Kenny replied, making a vague gesture with his tablet that Kateri saw out of the corner of her eye. What exactly “this” was, she had missed while she was brooding.

_Is that really the case, or you returning the favor from the other morning?_

Clinton departed. Kateri saw him talking to the others, and Jess glanced over quickly, but then they all disappeared into the building. Kateri climbed out of the car and came around to lean on the hood. Kenny joined her a minute later, leaning quietly beside her, poking away at his tablet.

“Penny for your thoughts?” He asked after a few minutes had passed.

Kateri snorted, “Not sure they’re worth that much.”

“I’d listen anyway.”

Those kind words drew a small, sad smile from her lips, and she shifted close enough to bump their shoulders togethers with a quiet “Thanks.” Kenny took that as invitation or permission to give her a quick side hug.

“That was pretty harsh what they said about the kid back there,” Kenny added after another minute.

 _Are you a mind reader now, or did you turn into my partner without me realizing it? He’s the one who reads my mind usually_.

Kateri snorted. “It’s more common than you’d think,” her voice went bitter, taking on an edge of sarcasm, “Let’s throw the troubled kid back into the system and try for a shiner version.”

 _So much for getting some air and distancing yourself_.

“It’s a tough situation … for everybody,” Kenny noted, obviously trying to hedge.

“The parents still get the check. We just get booted off to the next home.” Only after the words were already out of her mouth did Kateri realize that she had slipped and said ‘we.’

 _Bloody h**l. Let your mouth run away with you, and this is what you get_.

Kenny’s face went dark. He had picked up on the slip and, judging by the look on his face, was apparently quite … not happy … on her behalf. “Life’s not fair sometimes.”

“No, it is not.”

* * *

The trip to Child Services was not as helpful as the team had hoped. With a bit of … persuasion … they had finally been allowed to see Karina’s file. The poor kid, as was already known, had been put in the system after problems at home and had remained in the system until she was 17. At that time, she had left her latest placement and run away to Miami. Even though her foster parents had hired a PI, no trace of her had been found. Child Services had not even BOTHERED to look for her, saying it would have been too much of an EXPENSE given that she would soon age out of the system.

 _And one wonders why the bloody foster system can get a bad rep? That’s bloody insane_.

 _At least we have a place to start looking for Karina. That’s more than we had before_.

The team returned to the bus and, with stops for food and coffee, set to work trying to track down Karina. By early evening, little progress had been made.

“I checked social media, hospital records, financials, DMV, nothing,” Hana declared on her return from making coffee in the kitchenette.

“Same story with legal proceedings, criminal records, victim’s database,” added Clinton, leaning against the desk next to his partner’s chair. He had been keeping a close eye on her all afternoon.

_That’s a relief. At least she’s not dead … probably … unless she ended up as a Jane Doe_.

“Her cell phone number was last active two years ago,” Kenny took up the narrative at that point, settling back down in his chair, “No phone in her name, no active email accounts. It’s as if she doesn’t want to be found.”

“Chance to catch Denise is now,” Jess concluded, glancing over at the photo of Karina from her Child Services’ file, which had been brought up on one of the many screens in the bus, “before she gives up on Karina and disappears.”

Kateri’s phone began to vibrate with an incoming call from their main Baltimore PD liaison, just as Barnes began to make a very motherly comment about wanting to hug the poor kid. Kateri grabbed her phone and slipped out of the bus, leaving the others to talk.

 _Why are you calling me?_ Usually the Task Force agents or PD liaisons called one of the others.

“Agent Wood,” Kateri opened, covering her other ear to block out the city noises so she could hear her phone better.

“Agent Wood, this is Sergeant Castillo with the Baltimore PD. There was another sighting of your fugitive an hour ago in a park downtown. Officers have canvased the area, and there is no sign of her any longer, but I wanted to let you know right away.

_If this is a tip hint, why are you calling me?_

“Did the sighting come from the tip line?” Kateri asked, a note of puzzlement leaching into her voice.

“No, from a 911 Call,” the Sergeant replied— _Oh, bloody h**l_ , “A woman in the park reported a woman matching the description of the fugitive Denise Tyson and, I quote, ‘creepily talking to and touching my young daughter.’ It was only after the woman got her daughter away and left the park that she recognized Ms. Tyson.”

_I’ve got a bad feeling about this._

“Were the woman and the child African American?” Kateri asked, pinching the bridge of her nose.

There was the sound of flipping pages. “Yes, ma’am.”

_So not good._

“Okay. Thank you for letting me know. If you would, text me the address of the park and the contact information for the woman who identified Ms. Tyson.”

After hanging up the phone, Kateri slipped it back into her pocket and groaned. “Bloody h**l.”

_Boss thinks Tyson might up and disappear._

_I think she just might not be doing it alone_.

The conversation was wrapping up as she came back inside.

“Whatever we’re going to do, boss,” Kateri announced, “we’d better do it quickly.”

Sharp eyes snapped across to look at her. “What happened?” Jess asked.

“Just got a call from our liaison with the Baltimore PD. Ms. Tyson was seen half-an-hour ago in a downtown park creepily interacting with a young African American girl. I’ve got a bad feeling that, if Ms. Tyson disappears, it’s going to be with a replacement for Karina along with her,” Kateri replied.

“Then we’d better get moving.”


	5. Sunday-Monday, August 25-26: Day 5-6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Due to real life responsibilities, new chapters/stories will continue to come every third day for another week or two. Then I will really try to go back to posting every other day. University has finally finished for the spring, so even with summer responsibilities, I should have more time to write.
> 
> If all goes according to plan, the final chapter of Defender will be posted on May 15, and the next sidestory--Friendly Fire--will be posted on May 18.

As usual, Jess had a plan, and it was a very Jess plan. His plans did not always work, but they rarely failed to be interesting and inventive. This plan did not fail to disappoint. It rode on the fact that, given Denise had never seen a photo her grown daughter, she would probably not recognize her even if they met face-to-face. The plan, thus, was to use a fake Karina, drawn from the ranks of Baltimore PD recruits, to lure Ms. Tyson out of hiding.

Due to the late hour, putting the plan into action had to wait until the next morning. Jess and Barnes left early to go the Police Academy to speak to the recruits who met the physical requirements. They also hoped to find one with some acting chops, the better to pull off this ruse.

Hana, Kenny, Clinton, and Kateri, meanwhile, started organizing the other details of the plan. Sting operations, which this was a modified version thereof, might sound simplistic to some in theory, but in reality, were quite complex operations to do right, and the team had a limited amount of time to work with before Ms. Tyson might go to ground.

There were many things to arrange. Not only did they have to find a Karina, but they also had to secure Damon Johnson’s cooperation, arrange a TV interview that Ms. Tyson would hopefully see, find housing at which the interview and the operation would be held, arrange for surveillance and a SWAT team, and get a system step up for getting as many tenets as possible clear so there would be no collateral damage.

By the time a Karina had been found—a young recruit named Jaynie, who bore a decent resemblance to the photo of Karina—most everything had been arranged, and the interview was taped, it was late afternoon. The interview would be broadcast on local news channels that evening and would include the news that Damon Johnson had reached out to his long-lost daughter, asking to meet, and ‘Karina’ was going to go to his home to meet her half-siblings the next day.

 _If that doesn’t draw Ms. Tyson out of hiding, I don’t know what will_.

Dinner was a quiet affair, but thankfully there were no crab cakes involved. There was still work to be done, and concern for Barnes, who was playing the role of Karina’s foster mother, hung over them like a pall. Ms. Tyson was a decent shot and had no compunctions against collateral damage, and a Kevlar vest could not protect you from a close-range head shot.

 _It’s too close to dinner to think about head-shots_.

Kateri finished what work she had been assigned within two hours after dinner and then slipped outside to sit on the back bumper of the bus and think and enjoy the night air. _Granted there’s a lot less about the air to enjoy here than back on the Reservation, but it’s still fresh air._ Despite spending a whole lot of time in New York City, which was about as big a bustling metropolis as one could get, she still missed the outdoors and the Reservation. The traipsing about the woods, she could most definitely do without, but the wide-open spaces, the lack of car and city noises, the clear night air, the stars-- _all the_ _stars!_ \--those she missed.

_Big cities have their perks, but boy do they have their downsides._

She was not surprised when her partner joined her twenty minutes later once he had finished his chunk of work

“Penny for your thoughts?” Clinton asked, appearing around the corner of the bus.

_You sound like Kenny._

Kateri had heard the bus door open, so she didn’t jump at the sound of his voice. She looked up and smiled a greeting, “Hey, I’m mentally dissing light pollution and the lack of stars.”

Clinton snorted, taking a seat beside her, “It’s better out at the farm, but it’s still not the same.” _As the Reservation_ _?_

Kateri made a face of agreement, her brow furrowing for a moment, “I think … I remember seeing the Milky-Way at least once when I was a littleun. Good luck with that now.”

_The chill of the night air on her skin_

_Strong arms lifting her up to peer into the eye-piece of a small telescope_

_Her father’s voice in her ears_

Kateri gave a sad smile. Her memories of her parents had largely faded over the last twenty some years. She had only been eight when they died in a car accident while she was in second grade. Sometimes it had become very hard to tell what she actually remembered on her own and what she remembered based upon two scrapbooks of pictures and a handful of home videos.

_No aunts and uncles to tell me stories either._

_No grandparents either ... not anymore_.

Clinton let the comfortable silence linger for a few minutes before he finally brought up the subject which she had been expecting him to raise for over a day, “How are you after yesterday? You seemed … shaken back at the house.”

_Was wondering how long it would take before you found me to talk about all that._

“Shaken, angry, hurt, sad, take your pick or some combination thereof," Kateri replied, almost spitting out the words, "The balderdash coming out of Karina’s foster parents’ mouths touched a nerve, and I let the case get too personal.” _And you're still letting it get too personal. Get a grip!_

“From your time in the system?” Clinton asked gently. He knew the most about her childhood and time in the system, consequences of years as partners and a few long and painfully deep heart-to-heart conversations after her kidnapping in 2017 and resulting PTSS struggles.

_What else?_

Kateri nodded. “I was eight when my parents died, as you know, so I still remembered them. Not like I was just a baby and didn't remember anything aside from foster care and foster parents,” The momentary anger had faded, and her voice was soft and touched with sadness. “My parents had come to New York for better work opportunities. I didn’t want to be in America. I didn’t like America. I hated speaking English, and I wanted to go back to Quebec, to the Reservation, and the first few years in the system..."

Her voice trailed off, and she paused for a minute, a rueful smile crossing her face. "Well ... let’s just say I wasn’t the greatest kid to deal with. Not everyone wanted to deal with that … me … the non-white kid with a temper.”

There was silence for a minute as Clinton absorbed her words. His face was carefully blank, which probably meant that he was ... not happy ... and just trying not to show it. “That’s ...” He paused, made a face, and then started again, “I’m sorry for your sake and for hers. The overall goal of the system is good, but sometimes the system fails spectacularly.”

_I agree with you on both counts, especially the latter._

“That’s for bloody sure,” Kateri replied, leaning her head back against the bus and starring out into space ... _literally,_ “What her foster parents were saying, I took it too personally. I just couldn’t deal with Child Services right then on top of that.”

“Can’t blame you for that. It’s a rough situation.” Clinton shifted over so their shoulders were touching, "It shouldn't be like that, kid."

"I know. It's just ... Sometimes ...," Kateri cut herself off twice before she could shift into rant mode. Her partner would listen without a complaint, but there was no reason to subject him to her ranting about her opinions of the foster care system especially in regards to minority children. With rolled eyes and a annoyed sigh, she lapsed into silence.

Clinton made a commiserating noise but let the silence linger for another few minutes.

“I hope this plan of Jess' works,” Kateri finally said, a thread of worry creeping into her voice

Clinton glanced over at her, “Concerns?”

“Eh, not anything in specific. It’s a bold move but should work, at least, in theory. There’s just a lot of things that could go wrong.”

Her partner opened his mouth to reply, but a voice suddenly called their names from the direction of the bus door.

_Duty calls._

_Back to work_.

_I was kinda likin' just sitting here._

* * *

Monday dawned warm and bright. The morning was spent finalizing details for the afternoon’s operation, making sure everything was squared away with Jaynie (fake Karina) and Johnson, and then going over the plan and possible contingencies several times. After lunch, it was time to put the plan into motion, which meant settling down to wait and wait and wait and hope Ms. Tyson would take the bait.

 _For being on a manhunt, we sure to a lot of sitting around and waiting and waiting and waiting_. Kateri mused to herself silently after two hours’ watching and sitting had passed. She shifted positions and wiggled one foot around to shake out the pins and needles.

Glancing at her watch, she saw the time for the move—when Barnes, Johnson, and ‘Karina’ would leave the house to head for his place in Owings Mills—was fast approaching.

_If she’s going to come, that’ll be the time._

There had been no sign of Ms. Tyson yet. People were still moving on the street, and she was good at disguising herself.

Finally, there was movement at the front of the house, and Johnson, then ‘Karina,’ then Barnes appeared, moving toward the curb and the waiting car. A flash of sudden movement on the opposite side of the street drew Kateri’s attention, a black woman, one hand in her purse, was crossing the street at the double.

“Here we go!” Kateri called, giving the warning across the comms.

The team emerged from their cars and moved to surround the group and cut off Ms. Tyson’s ways of escape. SWAT backup was close behind.

“Get away from her!” Ms. Tyson shouted, her revolver pointed at the group.

Jess, his gun not drawn, had exited his car on the same side of the street as the target house and crossed onto the sidewalk, gun still not drawn. _Bloody h**l. Again, boss?_ Kateri, who was crossing the street with Clinton to cover him, felt an instinctive flash of fear. She’d seen the boss do the same thing before, and it always made her worry.

“Karina, baby, it’s me,” Ms. Tyson was saying, “Don’t go with him.”

Kenny, Hana, and several SWAT officers were moving up to cover the scene from the other angle, fully cutting off any escape paths.

It was striking how much difference forewarning made in the scene. Given Barnes, Johnson, and ‘Karina’ knew what was going to happen, there was no fear, no panic in anyone’s eyes, no hasty grabs for weapons, no nothin’. They were just standing there, starring at Tyson. No one had said anything yet.

_If I were her, I’d have known already that somethin’ was rotten in Denmark._

“Put the gun down, Denise,” Jess called, hands loose at his side, posture unthreatening, best negotiator voice on.

Ms. Tyson finally looked around, finally seemed to notice the FBI agents surrounding her. _Trap sprung. Now the conclusion_. Kateri at her partner’s side had gotten close enough to see a flash of some unidentifiable emotion cross the other woman’s face.

“Don’t come near me,” Ms. Tyson shouted back, gun still pointed at one among Barnes, ‘Karina,’ and Johnson, the other hand raised in the universal ‘stop’ gesture.

Kateri let one corner of her brain shift to analyzing Ms. Tyson’s mannerisms and voice, looking for any clues on how she might react. _Almost a thread of fear … not panic … calm-ish for now, kinda, maybe_. She kept the rest of her attention fixed on the overall situation and kept her gun pointed unwaveringly at Ms. Tyson’s chest.

 _Nobody on that side out on the street. Houses clear. Clear line of fire_.

“Baby, they won’t shoot if we’re together,” Ms. Tyson continued, almost begging.

_Desperate, she’s desperate … This is her one last chance to put things right._

_She’s not going to give up easily._

_She’s barely reacting to us even though we’re the bigger threat_.

Barnes had her arm around ‘Karina’s shoulder, and the girl had barely reacted, and the look on her face was not one of someone frozen in fear/shock/etc. that would help explain the non-reaction

_You need to work on your acting skills a little, kid._

_‘Karina’ should have a little more reaction to her long-lost mother than that_.

“Please, just come over,” Ms. Tyson gestured for her ‘daughter’ to join her.

“It’s over, Denise,” Jess called again, trying to get through to the desperate woman, “Put the gun down now.”

_Please do what he says. We don’t want to need to shoot you._

Another glance at Jess, but still no other reaction from Ms. Tyson.

“Look,” Johnson finally spoke, “just do what he says, Dee.”

 _Please don’t make this worse._ Given her previous anger towards him, there was no good way of knowing for sure how Tyson would react to Johnson’s presence or words. For now, she was so totally and utterly fixated on her ‘daughter’ that she almost seemed oblivious to everyone else.

Kateri let her gaze scan the entire scene for a split second, updating everyone’s position in her mental map, checking where her teammates were.

“Baby, this man who says he’s your father,” Ms. Tyson spoke again, gesturing somewhat wildly, a note of anger entering her voice, “He’s the reason they took you away from me. Tell her, Damon. You left her alone to go buy drugs. I tried to get you back,” her voice started to shake, “I tried to find you. Now, please, just come, come over here so that I can give you a hug.”

 _She sounds like she’s about to cry._ In some fugitives, Kateri would have thought her emotions were faked, but not with Ms. Tyson, not in this case. _A mother separated from her child for almost twenty years. The situation was a mess, but it’s still horrific, and this isn’t really Karina. I hope that poor kid isn’t dead_.

“I want to hold you,” Ms. Tyson was still addressing her ‘daughter,’ even though ‘Karina’ had said nothing, her face still blank-ish, and hadn’t moved from the shelter of Barnes’ protecting arm.

‘Karina’ turned to look at Barnes— _asking for directions??_ —and Ms. Tyson just got more upset, “Don’t look at her. She’s not your real mother.”

_Not good. Stay calm. We don’t want to shoot you._

“Look at me, Denise,” Jess called again, taking a couple of steps forward, “Look at me.”

Ms. Tyson glanced across at Jess, but Kateri saw her grip on her gun changed to a firmer, two-handed one. _Not good_. At a signal from her partner, she and Clinton moved around the Chevy they had stopped next to, slowly moving toward the sidewalk, slowly moving up to cover Jess as he moved. _Gotta keep him out of our line of fire. He moves, then we gotta move_.

“Don’t let your daughter see you like this,” Jess spoke again, trying to get through to Ms. Tyson, even though she was barely reacting to them at all.

_This is certainly going to go down as one of the stranger standoffs we’ve had._

“Don’t tell me how to treat my own daughter,” Ms. Tyson hollered. For a moment, the barrel of her gun turned slightly in Jess’ direction, and Kateri tightened her grip on her own gun, checking her sight picture, before finally Tyson lowered her gun again … slightly.

_Please do not make me need to shoot you._

“You don’t want to die in front of her,” Jess responded, “We’ve talked before. You have a good heart. We know that, just like your pastor said.” There was a long heartbeat of silence where he and Ms. Tyson were just starring at each other, and then Jess said again, “Put the gun down. For Karina.”

 _Just listen to him. We don’t want to have to shoot you_.

Jaynie, the intrepid police academy recruit, finally spoke for the first time, “Mama, just do like they say,”— _careful, don’t come on to strong_ —“Please.”

 _Please let the kid get through to her!_ It was a plea and a silent prayer all in one.

Clinton and Kateri had finally moved enough that Kateri was able to have a better angle on Ms. Tyson’s face, and she was close enough to see a sudden change of expression sweep over the older woman’s face as ‘Karina’ finished speaking. It wasn’t a good change.

 _Bloody h**l_.

 _Something just went wrong_.

“Where’s your scar, baby?” Ms. Tyson asked softly, the earlier anger and desperation leaking out of her voice to be replaced by something like puzzlement.

The agents exchanged looks. _So much for fooling her._

“On your arm, from when you fell off the sliding board?” Ms. Tyson continued, “Huh?”

‘Karina’ shifted nervously, one hand rubbing over her bare forearm. Johnson was acting just as nervous, glancing back in Jess’ direction. Only Barnes, with prior undercover experience, was calm and unruffled.

_Next time … if there is a next time … keep all excess skin covered, no rolled up sleeves._

“Where is it?” Ms. Tyson asked again. When no answer was forthcoming, she drew back a step, anger returning to her voice in a split second, “I don’t know who you are, but you are not my daughter.” She backed up several more steps, forcing Clinton and Kateri to again start moving to keep their line of fire unblocked by surrounding cars or by their teammates.

‘Karina’ did her best to salvage the situation, moving forward out of Barnes’ hold, one hand outstretched, “No, no, it’s me!”

“SHUT UP!” Ms. Tyson screamed.

_She’s losing it._

_She’s losing it._

“Denise, we’re looking for Karina,” Jess called, hands held out placatingly. The jig was up, so they had to try to find another way to get Ms. Tyson to surrender. “We haven’t found her yet, but we will.”

“Stop LYING!”

Johnson tried to say something to help the situation, but Kateri missed what he was saying, her attention riveted on Ms. Tyson and her every move and what Jess was saying so that she could catch any small directions he might drop.

“You got a raw deal, Denise,” Jess was persistent. He was still trying to negotiate, despite the fact the situation was fast going in the direction of FUBAR, “The children got a raw deal,”— _that’s the understatement of the century_ —“Don’t make it worse for them.” He was moving forward, still talking— _don’t get too close, boss_ —“Kendall and Karina, they’re far away. That’s true, but they need you.”

_She’s finally listening. Thank God!_

“They need their mother.”

Jess had finally moved up enough so that Clinton and Kateri could cross onto the sidewalk and take up covering positions on either side of him, Clinton on the right, Kateri on the left.

Ms. Tyson had a look on her face like everything, the enormity of the situation and the mess she was in, was finally seeking in, and she slowly turned, eyes taking in all the agents with drawn guns surrounding her. Slowly, she crouched and laid her gun on the sidewalk.

Clinton moved forward at a run to grab the gun, and Kateri circled left moving in between Ms. Tyson and Barnes and the others to cover him. Kenny appeared from directly behind Ms. Tyson to cuff her.

“Clear,” Kenny announced after quickly searching her.

With a muted sigh of relief, Kateri finally relaxed and holstered her gun, glancing back to look over and check Barnes, Johnson, and the kid with okay.

_Nobody else is dead or dying or hurt._

_That counts as a win_.


	6. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of my reviewers expressed the hope that Kateri's truck would get fixed. I had not originally had a scene where that happened, but my muse cooperated, and thus this conclusion, a more feel-good chapter than usual:

It was mid-to-late afternoon by the time the Ms. Tyson was apprehended and taken into custody. By the time the team had finished wrapping up business in Baltimore, including some ever-hated paperwork, gotten the family photo returned to Ms. Tyson’s father in the nursing home, and gotten dinner it was past 8pm.

 _Since everything always seems to take longer than we planned when the chance of getting home is finnnaaaallllyyy on the horizon_.

Everyone was tired, and there was still a three-hour drive standing between them and home. Jess asked if there was preference to stay in Baltimore one more night and then drive home the next day. The lure of home was stronger than their tiredness, however, and everyone preferred heading home.

 _Only a three-hour drive. Two to a car. We can switch off and keep each other awake_.

Neither Kateri nor Clinton were that tired, but Kateri insisted on taking the first leg of the drive home. _I’ll probably doze off anyway, because it’s a car trip after the pressure’s off_. She knew that if Clinton drove first and she fell asleep, there was a very good chance her partner would simply not wake her up to take her turn driving. _Because he’s nice like that … and stubborn as a bloody mule_.

Due to traffic, the three-hour drive turned into a four-and-a-half-hour drive, and it was well past midnight by the time the team arrived back at HQ to switch from their government cars back to their personal cars and drop off a few things.

After returning a few things to her locker, Kateri stopped in the lady’s room for a moment. When she exited a couple of minutes later, she heard Kenny saying something about claiming the right to drive her home. Barnes and Jess had only stuck around long enough to switch cars, while the others had gone inside. Hana had stopped at her computer for a minute but had already headed out, just leaving Kenny, Clinton, and Kateri herself in the office.

_Okkkkkkkkaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyy_

“I’m not a commodity to be disposed at will, Kenny,” Kateri declared, grabbing her bag from the conference table and swinging it over one shoulder, her face a mixture of puzzlement and amusement.

“I know that,” Kenny dragged the syllables out, “but we’ve got to conspire.”

 _You definitely need to go to bed, Kenny. Like now._ When he was between the point of extreme tiredness and dead-on-your-feet exhaustion, Kenny got … kinda punchy and even more of a joker than usual.

Only eyebrow began to crawl its way up her partner’s face, as he looked between the two with a look that was 1/3 puzzlement, 1/3 amusement, and 1/3 “Do I want to know?”

Kateri shook her head at Kenny with an amused grin, “Fine, fine, shoo. I’ll be out in a moment.” She flapped her hands in the direction of the garage.

_Who needs comedy when I have my team._

With a delighted shout, Kenny departed with a loud clash of clanging doors. When he was safely out of hearing distance, Kateri shook her head fondly and then face-palmed, dragging her hand down her face in an exaggerated motion.

_Scratch that, we all need to go to bed._

“Do I want to know?” Clinton asked dryly.

“It’s fine. Kenny’s just being Kenny,” Kateri reassured him, “He promised to look at my truck for me, and I promised to feed him. That’s all,” She paused and made a face, “At least that’s what I’m guessing this is all about.”

Clinton nodded with the touch of an amused grin curling up the corners of his mouth, “Be careful driving home. I think Kenny’s about ready to drop.”

_Hadn’t noticed that. Good to know._

_They got back a few minutes after us_.

Kateri’s gaze sharpened, and she glanced quickly toward the garage, “Good to know. Maybe he’ll let me drive … If I offer him breakfast," she mused, "maybe I can talk him into sleeping on my couch tonight.”

Now Clinton really did chuckle, “That would work.”

 _Food, the fastest way to Kenny Crosby’s heart_.

The two partners parted ways, and Kateri jogged out to the garage, not wanting Kenny to wait on her any longer than necessary when he was going to the trouble of driving her home. _Because my stupid truck decided to do a thing._ Her annoyance at her truck had eased somewhat over the course of the case, but she was still peeved at its especially bad timing.

_If Kenny can’t figure out what’s wrong, maybe I should get a new truck._

_This thing just got inspected for heaven’s sake._

Kateri took the chance to study Kenny unobtrusively as she approached his jeep. He was leaning against the back waiting for her, staring off into space. _Clinton’s right. He does look he’s about to drop_. At the sound of her footsteps, Kenny finally looked up and forced a smile.

“Ready to go?” He asked.

 _As soon as you give me the keys_.

“Why don’t you let me drive?” Kateri asked, “You look bushed.”

Kenny was very possessive over his jeep and allowed very few people to drive it in his stead. The fact that he agreed with only a little protest was evidence of how dead tired he was. _Definitely talking him in to sleeping on my couch_.

The route from HQ to her apartment was one Kateri could almost drive in her sleep, but conscious that she was sleep-deprived and tired, she went to greater lengths to focus and not drive on automatic like she sometimes inadvertently did.

“You get any sleep on the drive back?” Kateri asked.

Kenny, who looked like he was about ten seconds from dozing off in the car, shook his head. “I drove straight through. Hana fell asleep, and I didn’t have the heart to wake her.”

_You did what Clinton would have done._

_That’s why I made him let me drive first_.

 _Extremely glad I’m driving then_.

“I can’t … imagine she was happy about that?”

Kenny gave a half-smile. “Nope,” he seemed quite proud of himself, “she thanked me for letting her sleep, and then conked me over the head for being an idiot and not waking her up so we could split the work.”

 _Sounds like Hana_.

Kateri laughed and then let the silence linger for a few minutes, before she broached the next topic, “You’re bushed, Kenny, and I’m not sure you’d make it home in one piece. Why don’t you sleep on my couch tonight?”

Kenny hemmed and hawed for a minute at that. They’d all slept on each other’s couches more than a few times over the last couple of years, so it wasn’t that.

 _Hey, I’d want to sleep in my own bed, too_.

“I’ll feed you,” Kateri added, sweetening the deal.

“You already promised to feed me,” Kenny countered.

_You're not too dead yet.  
_

“I’ll feed you twice, breakfast and whatever meal it is after you look at my truck.”

“Done!” Kenny grinned.

Both of them were crashing, or in Kenny’s case, _almost completely_ crashed, by the time Kateri parked his jeep in front of her apartment building. Kateri put a finger to her lips as they stepped inside, warning Kenny to make as little noise as possible. Most of the other tenets in the old complex were nice, but there were a number of noisy ones and a few unpleasant people who would raise a ruckus if the two of them made a racket. _Though at this hour of the night ... morning, I wouldn't blame them._

_I'd be complaining to the supe, too, if others were coming back at wee hours sounding like they were banging bongo drums._

_No place like home!_

With a sigh of relief as finally being home after a more trying than usual case, Kateri unlocked her apartment door and let herself and Kenny inside. She flipped on the hallway light, dropping her bag by the hall closet.

“Make yourself at home. I think you know where everything is by now.” Everyone had been in each other’s apartments to know pretty well where everything could be found.

Kateri’s apartment was small and on the older side but comfortable and well lived-in. _Thought I’d never find enough stuff to fill this place up but so I did._ There was a long hallway extending from the front door that opened up into the kitchen on the left and then into the living room. The dining room and kitchen were small but livable for one person who had only occasional visitors. In the living room there were a worn but comfortable couch, a small TV on a stand, a large bookcase covered in about as many knickknacks and pictures as books, and Kateri’s large desk covered almost entirely with papers, cords. _Entropy again. I keep cleaning it!_ At one end of the living room was a small balcony, cordoned off by thick curtains.

_Security risk anyone?_

_Surveillance_

_Peeping toms_

_Break-ins_

By the time Kateri got bedding for Kenny and he got settled, he looked about five seconds from falling asleep, but she had one warning before he went zzzzzzzz for the night.

“I’ll make breakfast as soon as we’re both up. You’re welcome to anything in the cabinets or to coffee if you somehow get up before I do,”— _I’m not holding my breath_ —“just don’t go rummaging through the fridge. I know what’s good and what I need to pitch because I’ve been gone a week.”

_Poisoning the closest thing I have to a brother would not go over well._

Kenny nodded and stretched out on the couch, and Kateri disappeared into her bedroom in the back. Within ten minutes she herself collapsed into bed and soon fell asleep, the familiar sound of Kenny sawing logs in the background.

_Just like I’m back on the bus…_

Worn down by a long case and multiple short night’s sleep and then one very, very long day, Kateri slept without dreaming or waking until nearly 9am. When she finally fully surfaced from sleep and woke up enough to drag herself out of bed and get some day clothes on, it was nearly 9:30am and Kenny was still sawing logs loudly.

_It’ll be good to have a normal day._

_No work … or paperwork._

_No craziness._

_No people shooting at us._

_A normal day_.

_Sometimes I wonder if I still remember what normal is._

It was 10am by the time Kenny started to rouse and Kateri started on breakfast. The leftovers she had made before the case had all gone bad. _Some of ‘em look like science experiments waiting to happen. Ick!_ But she had enough dry goods … and milk substitute … _thank goodness for milk substitute, which doesn't go bad_ … as well as eggs and frozen bacon to make pancakes, bacon, and eggs for breakfast. _Along with coffee … lots and lots of coffee_.

“Did I ever tell you I loved you?” Were the first words out of Kenny’s mouth once he was finally awake and had wandered into the kitchen.

 _Food, the fastest way to his heart_.

“Either the last time I fed you or the last time I kept you from having to sleep on the top bunk in the bus,” Kateri replied dryly, eyes twinkling, “Shoo, wash up. Breakfast’s almost ready.”

Breakfast was a companionable affair. There was no talk of work or paperwork or anything crazy related to work. The conversation rabbited trailed from the news to the weather to movies to the condition of Kateri’s truck to complaints about rent and apartments to video games to little eateries in the Bronx and everything in between.

When they had finished eating and consumed enough coffee to be reasonably awake, they meandered outside so Kenny could have a look at her truck— _why am I not surprised that he’s got a tool box in his Jeep_ —and continue the conversation at the same time.

They had been outside working for about an hour— _Kenny’s been working; I’ve just been handing him tools periodically_ —and a discussion about the realism or lack thereof in a recent cop show had just wound to a close when the banging, thumping, and swearing from the direction of Kateri’s truck suddenly stopped.

Kateri, who was seated cross-legged on the curb, looked up. “Everything okay?” She asked, a hint of puzzlement in her voice.

“You said you just got this bucket of bolts inspected, right?” Kenny replied, emerging from under the hood and turning to look at her. His hair was mussed, and there was a streak of grease across one cheek.

“Yeaaaaa, just recently,” Kateri drawled, one eyebrow crawling its way up her face.

 _I don’t think I’m going to like where this is going_.

“How recently is recently?”

“Between the last two cases recently. Why?”

“Good news is I can fix your truck. Bad news is your mechanic is either blind as a bat or a bloody idiot, as you would say, and you need to find a new one … pronto … either way,” Kenny replied with a scowl.

_Okkkkkaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyy_

Kateri swore fluently in three languages, before asking with a groan, “What’s wrong with my truck, or is there a list?”

 _I like this truck, but it’s soooo old. I don’t want to pay more than the truck’s worth in replacement parts_.

“I think your battery’s fine,” Kenny replied with a glare back at the innards of the car, “but your starter looks realllllyyyyy iffy.”

 _So much for nothing looking bonkers to me_.

 _Mechanic’s definitely an idiot_.

Kateri’s face looked a little dumbstruck. “Okay,” she paused, sighed, and rolled her eyes, “Am I going to pay an arm and a leg and my first-born kid, if I were to actually have one, to fix that?” She waved one hand in the direction of the car.

 _Maybe I should talk Kenny into teaching me a wee bit more about cars_.

Kenny started to shake his head and then turned that into a half-shrug. Dropping the tool he had had in hand back into his box and wiping his hands on a rag, he dropped to a seat on the curb beside her, “How much it costs depends on whether the starter’s kaput or there’s just a problem with the wiring. If the whole starter’s bad, you’re lookin’ at a couple hundred for the part.”

 _Eh, could be worse, and I like this thing_.

“Fix it, if you can, please.”

 _If it’s actually fixed, Clinton’ll stop teasing me … maybe_.

“Happy to, but I’ll need to go to the shop to get a part or two,” Kenny replied, getting up and dusting himself off.

“Sure. Can you drop me off in Little Italy? I need to buy a couple things for lunch.”

Kenny agreed happily.

 _Any food coming from Little Italy, he knows it’ll be good._

_And Lorenzo and Ernesta will be happy to see me._

_They should have something good and chocolatey to go with lunch._


End file.
